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JOSEPH CONRAD 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 



BY 
RUTH M. STAUFFER 




Boston 

The Four Seas Company 

1922 



Copyright, 1Q22, by 
The Four Seas Company 



o^ 






The Four Seas Press 
Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 



AUG -9 "2? 

©CI.A681497 



TO 

LETTIE ETHEL STEWART 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Page 

PART I. The Meaning of Romantic-Realism 
AND Its Applica,tion to Joseph 
Conrad ii 

PART II. The Romantic-Realism of Conrad's 
Method of Plot Construction 
AND OF Character Development . 30 

PART III. The Romantic-Realism in Conrad's 

Use of Setting 58 

PART IV. The Spirit of Conrad 74 

Appendices 91 



JOSEPH CONRAD: 
HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 



PART I 



The Meaning of Romantic-Realism and Its 
Application to Conrad 

ITERARY formulas are in themselves dead leaves 
' blown here and there before the breath of many 
ics. Vital once, and full of color, they come too soon 
e mere dried skeletons animated only by passing winds 
:ontention until there arises the man who can quicken 
n to new birth. "Realism, Romanticism, Naturalism, 
1 the unofficial sentimenalism" through the medium 
'the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of 
less usage" become recreated when a new artist, — 
ither he be writer of verse or of prose matters little, — 

given the world once more to see "the truth of life." 
h is the genius of Joseph Conrad, 
low after Conrad's twenty-six years of literary 
vity, critics are practically unanimous in granting him 
lace in the highest rank of novelists. Galsworthy's 
ute in 1908 when The Secret Agent had added the 
:h to the list of Conrad's published works, has become 

of the best know critical dicta of the decade: "The 
ting of these ten books," he said, "is probably the only 
ting of the last twelve years that will enrich the 
'lish language." Ford Hueffer goes so far as to de- 
ll 



12 JOSEPH CONRAD 

clare, "Literature and Conrad are to me interchange 
terms." Mr. J. M. Robertson begins an article^ 
Conrad in the North American Review of Septem 
1918, with the statement: "Conrad, I suppose, wouk 
a vote of literary men be generally given the hig 
place in fiction in our day." No less enthusiastic is^ 
estimate placed upon Joseph Conrad's work by the f 
most critics in England, America, and France. 

Yet in spite of the high esteem in which all thougbl 
critics hold him, these same men are puzzled to know 
to pigeon-hole him. They acclaim his distinction, 
originality, but they disagree among themselves whe: 
he is to be labeled Realist or Romanticist. William LI 
Phelps decides: "Now, there is nothing romantic al 
Conrad except his medium — the sea." Gilbert de Vor 
in one of the most recent articles on Conrad asks : "1' 
vient done cette accusation de realism excessif qui II 
longtemps poursuivi et qu' il retrouvait sous la plum^ 
tant de critiques?" At one of these two extremes n 
critics range themselves. 

There are those, however, who see in Conrad's v^ 
a union of these two schools that swayed the literatun 
the past century. Mr. Richard Curie, Conrad's offt 
biographer, says in his book, Joseph Conrad: A SU 
"It is indeed strangely appropriate that the man who| 
led one of the most wandering and one of the hai 
lives of our time should have written the most re 
tically-romantic novels of our age." 

When we come to examine the meanings that 
accrued to these two terms in the course of lite 
debate, we conclude that in Conrad's work the empl 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 13 

,is to lie the otiher way: he is rather a Romantic- 
ist than a writer of ^'realistically-romantic novels,"— 
setter still, there is almost equal balance between the 
Joseph Conrad employs Realism or Romanticism 
oth whenever either or both may be needed to create 
impression of actuality. In fact, Mr. Curie himself 
le latter part of his book reverses his own emphasis, 
says in Chapter XI, '1 do not think I am exaggerating 
n I say that Conrad ranks with the great romantic 
ists of modern times," and again, "For it is as a 
ist that Conrad is most impressive . . . The spirit 
lis work is reaUstic in a rare and curious manner, 
it is a realism which includes romance as one of its 
f assets." One of the best brief discussions of the 
lantic-Realism of Conrad's art appears in the little 
^me on Conrad by Hugh Walpole. The FoUetts have 
marized the secret of Joseph Conrad's originality and 
:'er in an article on his work that was published in 
Alantic Monthly in 191 7: 

[f Mr. Joseph Conrad appears at first glimpse as a 
lancer, — and it is certain to many readers he does, — 
explanation is simply that he is a deeper realist than 
ommonly perceived." 

/hat is Romanticism? What is Realism? The mind 
:he world is perpetually demanding exact definitions 
all abstractions. It would be wearisome even to 
merate the books an4 essays that have been written 
11 languages to define these two terms. A full exam- 
ion of every one of these is out of place here. Each 



14 JOSEPH CONRAD 

critic has chosen some definite phase as the differentic 
factor between Romanticism and ReaUsm. But a s; 
of the work of the artists themselves, who are creai 
not defining, will reveal that the distinctions under! 
the Romantic and the Realistic are of three kind 
difference in subject matter; a difference in method ;i 
lastly, a difference in the spirit of the writer.* I 

Literary tradition has come to accept certain e\i 
and circumstances in life as pertaining wholly toj 
province of the Romantic writer, and it has deci 
that they are as rigorously to be shunned by the Rei 

Romance, in the first place, deals with the unfamii 
To satisfy this love of the strange and the remote,] 
Romanticists of the late eighteenth and early seventy 
centuries turned first of all to the Middle Ages for s) 
and for setting in an attempt to recreate the atmospj 
of the past. In modern times any unknown plac' 
region will do as well as the Middle Ages. The Rei 
on the other hand, endeavors to portray those conditt' 
happenings, and people with which he is familiar in (t 
life, and which most of us associate with the humdj 
and the commonplace. Then, again, Romance revelj 
the supernatural, the weird, the ghostly. The Realist; 
have nothing to do with anything so fantastical; he ■ 
fines himself to the facts that common sense acc( 
This Romantic love of strangeness predicates natui 
a fondness for adventure where curiosity and enthusit 
may be satisfied in the excitement of stirring events. 



* See Appendix V.f "A Brief Summary of the Definition 
Romanticism and Realism." and also Appendix VI, "Bibliogr 
on Romanticism and Realism." 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 15 

i Realist is interested in the meaning of the everyday 
tions of ordinary people, in the representation of the 
ual incidents of contemporary hfe. If he should ever 
:roduce shipwrecks, revolutions, murders, suicides, into 
5 plots, or permit sailors, anarchists, savages, heroes, 
enter his pages, it would be only in order that he might 
bisect their symptoms and reactions according to the 
tablished impartial attitude of scientific investigation,— 
ver that he might carry his readers away with the 
amour of the adventure per se, as the Romancer loves 

do. 

In his search for individuality of experience the Ro- 
anticist turns to the lonely places of the earth, to Nature 

its freest form. He seeks the elemental; the vast 
^eep of sky and ocean, the winds and the tempests, the 
ountains and the stars become to him the embodiment 

the wonder of the world in which he finds himself 
iprisoned. This gives rise to that enthusiasm over 
ature as setting which we associate with the Romantic 
hool. On the contrary, the Realist is more interested in 
e study of environment ; that is, of the social heredity 
: his characters, of the physical environment only in so 
ir as it molds them, primarily of the social environment, 
eluding the industrial, educational, political, religious, 
id local surroundings. The opportunities which these 
mditions offer and their influence on the characters, and 
le latters' control over these circumstances, form the 
isis of the plot of the realistic novel. 

Between the Romanticist and the Realist there exists 
distinction more essential, however, than the mere selec- 
on of subject matter; that is, the individuality of the 



i6 JOSEPH CONRAD 

method in which each treats the given material. In t 
first place, the Romanticist creates through his imagin 
tion in broad outlines, suggestive rather than specific 
whereas the Realist must adopt the scientific method. I 
observes, analyzes, experiments, synthesizes proved fac 
not hypotheses. He uses reason rather than imaglnatic 
He psychologizes rather than interprets. The Real; 
gives us the untouched negative; the Romanticist t 
idealized picture. To the Realist, as Zola says, 

"Imagination is no longer the predominating quality 
of the novelist. . . . Since imagination is no longer 
the ruling quality of the novelist, what, then, is to 
replace it? There must always be a ruling quality. 
Today the ruling characteristic of the novelist is the 
sense of reality. . . . The sense of reality is to feel 
nature and to be able to picture her as she is. 
... In the same way that they formerly said of a 
novelist, 'He has imagination,' I demand that they 
should say today, 'He has a sense of reality.' This 
will be grander and more just praise. The ability to 
see is less common, even, than creative power." 

The traditional view, therefore, is that the Romantici 
constructs through his imagination and an instinctive pa 
ception of the fitness of things; a Realist, through H 
observation and his reason. 

Now, in the second place, in order to create excitemei 
and wonder, the Romanticist builds up a plot full of su 
pense, surprise, and contrast, beginning with a definii 
provocative incident and culminating in a thrillin 
climax; such a plot as Ben Jonson defines in his di: 
cussion of the laws of the drama : 

"The fable is called the imitation of one entire and 
perfect action, whose parts are so joined and knit 
together, as nothing in the structure can be changed, 
or taken away, without impairing or troubling the 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 17 

whole, of which there is a proportionable magnitude, 
in the numbers," 

1 definition which he Hfted bodily from Aristotle's 
Poetics. 

But the Realist may go so far as not to have any 
plot at all in this usually accepted meaning of the word. 
De Maupassant says : 

"After the literary schools which have sought to 
give us a deformed, superhuman, poetic, tender, 
charming, or superb vision of life, there has come a 
realistic or naturalistic school, which professes to 
show us the truth, and nothing but the truth. 
. . . The incidents are disposed and graduated to the 
climax and the termination, which is the crowning 
decisive event, satisfying all the curiosity awakened 
at the beginning, barring any further interest, and 
terminating so completely the story told that we no 
longer desire to know what will happen to the per- 
sonages who charmed our interest. . . , The novelist, 
on the other hand, who professes to give us an exact 
image of life ought carefully to avoid any concatena- 
tion of events that seem exceptional. His object is 
not to tell a story, to amuse us, to touch our pity, 
but to compel us to think, and to understand the deep, 
I hidden meaning of events. Through having seen 
■ and meditated, he looks at the universe, things, facts, 
and men, in a manner peculiar to himself, the result 
of the combined effect of observation and reflection. 
He seeks to impart to us this personal vision of the 
world by reproducing it in his book. In order to 
move us as he himself has been moved by the spec- 
tacle of life, he must reproduce it before our eyes 
with scrupulous accuracy. He will have, then, to 
compose his work so skilfully, with such apparent 
simplicity, as to conceal his plot and render it impos- 
sible to discover his intentions . . . One can under- 
stand how such a manner of composition, so different 
from the old method, apparent to all eyes, often 
bewilders the critics, and that they do not discover 
the fine, secret, almost invisible threads employed by 
certain modern artists in place of the single thread 
which was called the 'plot'." 



i8 JOSEPH CONRAD 

In regard to setting, also, there is a difference in treat- 
ment. Instead of the detailed and sometimes photo- 
graphic description of surroundings and explanations of: 
environmental conditions which the Realist assembles, we 
find in the works of the Romanticist a more pictorial 
description of place setting, and especially of Nature, in 
broader masses of color, of light, of shadow, of sound, 
aiming at the creation of an emotional tone and producing: 
a subtle artistic effect. The Romanticist looks for beauty 
in all things. Sometimes his treatment of setting may be; 
symbolic. 

The broader method of the Romanticist appears again 
in his portrayal of the dramatis personae of his stories. 
Instead of characters analyzed in careful detail which iti 
is the chief aim of all Realists to create, we see in Ro- 
mantic fiction vaguer outlines, characters less specialized] 
and less complex, — types, in fact, rather than individuals. 

Subject matter, method of treatment, — these are two: 
essential differences between the Romanticist and the; 
Realist. But these are not all. There exists a third 
factor which is the fundamental distinction, for out oi. 
it these first arise; that is, a divergency in the attitudes 
of each towards life. This proceeds from the spirit of 
the man himself. ' Both are seekers for truth. But the 
Realist finds the truth in facing the facts of life as he 
can observe them with complete impartiality and disillu- 
sionment. He strives to attain an impersonal, objective 
point of view; he puts sympathy outside the pale. His 
purpose, in so far as he will avow a purpose, is altruistic 
because he believes that the exact revelation of life as it 
is, based on scientific evidence obtained from his own 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 19 

experience, is in itself moral; the universal as revealed 
through the specific is his aim, and knowledge rather than 
wisdom his goal. "We teach the bitter science of life, 
we give the high lesson of reality," says Zola. 

The Romanticist cannot rest content with such practical 
didacticism. Life to him is not "a bitter science"; it is 
a glorious art. As Stevenson says, 

"The great creative writer shows us the realization 
and apotheosis of the day-dreams of common men. 
His stories may be nourished with the realities of 
life, but their true mark is to satisfy the nameless 
longings of the reader, and to obey the ideal laws of 
the day-dream. . . . Fiction is to the grown man what 
play is to the child; it is there that he changes the 
atmosphere and the tenor of his life; and when the 
game so chimes with his fancy that he can join in 
it with all his heart, when it pleases him with every 
turn, when he loves to recall it and dwells upon its 
recollection with entire delight, fiction is called 
romance." 

To the writer of romance, then, illusion Is his life- 
breath, and wonder the blood in his veins. He stands 
"silent, upon a peak in Darien," looking out over the 
magnificent spectacle of life, quivering with beauty, with 
passion, with ardor, life half revealed, half concealed in 
a flood of the light of mystery. He is eager to explore 
the mystery ; he pushes on toward the illimitable horizon 
of life, bafflled now by the inscrutability of fate, now by 
the pathos of human suffering, at times quieted by the 
serenity of experience past ; but eternally young in soul, 
urged on by a "divine discontenjt," he aspires to his vision 
of the spiritual. 

It has been frequently taken for granted that no man 
can be both Romanticist and Realist, because, as Clayton 



20 JOSEPH CONRAD 

Hamilton puts it, "the distinction is not external but 
internal; it dwells in the mind of the novelist; it is a 
matter for philosophic, not literary investigation." 
Brander Matthews says of the novelist: "Either he de- 
lights in the Classic or else he prefers the Romantic ; for 
him to be an electic is a stark impossibility." 

But is this absolute? May it not be possible for a 
writer to treat the subject matter of Romance in the 
method of a realist? May not a genius so combine 
method and matter with the imagination of a great 
scientist and the technique of a great artist,— in other 
words, with the keen perception and broad vision of the 
seer, — as to create neither Romance nor Reality, but 
Actuality itself? 

"Perhaps," says a modern writer apropos of ethics, 
quoted by Neilsen in his Essentials of Poetry, "all theories 
of practice tend, as they rise to their best, as understood 
by their worthiest representatives, to identification with 
each other." And Mr. Neilsen goes on to say, "The 
supreme artists at their best rise above conflicts and 
propaganda, and are known, not by the intensity of their 
partisanship, but by the perfection of their balance. 
They show the virtues of all the schools; and in them 
each virtue is not weakened, but supported, by the pre- 
sence of others which lesser men had supposed to be 
antagonistic." It is the man who sees in the romantic 
situations in which the most humdrum daily life abounds 
the realities of all human experience, who can transcribe 
them now with the impersonal observation of the scientist, 
now with the vision of the poet, who best reproduces for 
us the actuality of human life. 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 21 

The Romantic-Realist, then, aims to translate into the 
medium of fiction life as it actually is. Both the real 
and the romantic are inherent in all human affairs; and 
Realism or Romanticism is, after all, a matter of 
emphasis. 

The Romanticist will look for those conditions or 
appearances of life which will create for men pure enter- 
tainment and relaxation by lifting them out of the 
commonplace and the complex. Man, when he wants to 
lose himself, demands above all else that "something be 
doing." A Romanticist, therefore, is interested primarily 
in happenings; he seeks for "some act or attitude that 
shall be remarkably striking to the mind's eye," as 
Stevenson puts it. The most irresistible appeal of ro- 
mance, Walter Raleigh says, is not to the eye nor to the 
reason, but to the blood, "to all that dim instinct of 
danger, mystery and sympathy in things that is man's 
oldest inheritance — to the superstitions of the heart." 
The Romanticist finds out the unusual, the heroic, the 
imaginatively stimulating in the occurrences of daily life, 
and lays emphasis upon them. He sweeps us on by sheer 
intensity of action throug^h a series of events with alter- 
nate checks of mystery, terror, premonition, suspense, to 
surprise and climax. In this zest for doing we do not 
pause to weigh the subtleties of motive nor to analyze the 
niceties of psychological distinctions in character evolu- 
tion. We know the men and women of the story by their 
deeds. As to whether they be unalterably scientific pro- 
ducts of their environment or not, the Romancer does not 
examine too profoundly. Certain eras, certain physical 
surroundings, they must belong to in order to make 



22, JOSEPH CONRAD 

possible the things they do, whether the romance be 
historical, piratical, or Londonesque. This background 
may be merely suggested or may be elaborately depicted 
with all the photographic detail of the most dyed-in-the- 
wool Realist. Stevenson, for example, is minutely 
accurate in the description of latitude, longitude, winds, 
and islands in the account of the voyage of the Farallone, 
or again in the enumeration of the motley accumulation 
of ship lumber piled in Attwater's dusty storehouse, or 
the careful marshalling of details that is a running, 
commentary to the whole plot of The Wrecker,— thsiti 
grown-up Treasure Island. 

But this realistic detail, although it plays upon ourt 
credulity that the extraordinary tale be real, is, after all, 
incidental, and hardly holds our attention so eager ar^ 
we to press on to the real business, — the progress oft 
events. To the Romanticist the world serves only as 
the }nise en scene for things that happen. At times this^ 
background is merely pictorial, at times it is fatefully, 
symbolic ; but it possesses always the glamour of the; 
unusual or a delightful suggestiveness discovered in the; 
usual. Into the deeds of men and this picture that frames 
them, the Romanticist reads the mystery of all human 
existence. The great Romanticist is gifted with the 
language of a poet to suggest that mystery, and to unveil 
what he has found of its meaning. 

It may be that a novelist will choose to lay his emphasis 
only on aspects such as these, — that which we call 
Romance. It may be that he will choose to combine or 
to vary this emphasis with another that more properly 
belongs to the school of Realism. He may, to be sure, 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 23 

relate the surprising, even the bizarre that faces the world 
in all parts of the globe,— common places and remote 
regions;— but he may relate those happenings not as 
adventures for the sake of entertainment pure and smiple, 
but as dramas of gradually unfolding motive and char- 
acter. He will search out the puzzle of individuality, that 
which makes the study of every Hfe more intriguing than 
the unraveling of the most involved detective story. He 
may examine into the effects of environment on a man's 
character or his destiny without losing any of the artist's 
appreciation of the beauty or the horror of the environ- 
ment as background. Ordinary seeming men and women 
evolve in his hands from the simple, firm outlines to 
which a career of events alone moulds them into subtly 
modeled individuals. He may keep the impersonal, un- 
emotional attitude of the realist, that belongs to the scien- 
tific investigator, together with the perception of the 
nobility of life and of the spiritual significance of man 
that belongs to the philosopher and the poet. And, above 
all, he may possess that transcendent quality of style 
which at once reveals and veils the beauty, the glory, the 
fatality, the mystery of actuality as we know and live it. 
This is to be a Romantic-Realist. Of such rare union of 
scientist, seer, and poet is the genius of Joseph Conrad. 
We have seen that Romantic-Realism arises primarily 
from a perception of the actual. Now actuality must be 
realized through experience; that is, through action and 
observation reassembled and emphasized in the memory, 
directed and harmonized through the reason, and inter- 
preted through the imagination. Given judgment and 
imagination and observation, therefore, it follows that the 



24 JOSEPH CONRAD 

richer the experience and the sharper the memory, th 
deeper will be the perception of actuality. Fate took 
hand, it would seem, in schooling Joseph Conrad in thes^ s 
very qualities. A Polish boy of aristocratic family] 
trained in home and in university in the best tradition] 
of the world's literature, he took service as a lad befor 
the mast on a sailing vessel at Marseilles in 1874; ami 
after four years of life on the Mediterranean, finally sef 
foot in his longed-for goal, England. There at the ag'^ 
of twenty-one he learned that language in which he ha? 
since been proclaimed the most distinguished artist oi 
the twentieth century. For twenty years longer he sailed 
all the seas of the world as common seaman, mate, anc 
finally Master, in the English Merchant Service. Then 
after these twenty-five years of toilsome and adventurou 
sailor's life, he left the sea and wrote his first novel' 
Almayer's Folly, published in 1895. Since then he ha 
devoted himself wholly to writing. 

That not even the slightest detail of all the crowdef 
impressions of those twenty-five years at sea escape 
Conrad's observation, his novels are standing proof. HI 
has an astonishing memory not only for what he himsell 
has passed through, but for the experiences of others 01 
which he has heard. His unique autobiography, A Per 
sonal Record, reveals these two gifts on every page 
Witness the accurate detail and imaginative re-creatioi 
of his account of how his granduncle ate a dog, a tal 
told him, long before, when he was a Httle boy; of tha 
day in his walking trip through the Alps which proved t( 
be the turning point in his life; of his first sight of th' 
British flag on a ship in the harbor of Marseilles. 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 25 

: It is only the person of limited experience who denies 
ht presence in everyday life of romantic situations and 
iensational incidents. A writer who aims at the presen- 
ation of all life, therefore, is justified in including much 
hat in its bald statement may be called sensational, even 
urid. Romance, sometimes melodrama, is the matter of 
ivery moment of existence. A citizen of a conservative 
Eastern city has only to read any San Francisco news- 
)aper to be convinced of this. For instance, one after- 
loon, with pencil in hand, I glanced casually 
hrough a newspaper which had already that morning 
>een read for world news. Call it the Daily Occidental: 
rou remember what Stevenson says of it — "This was a 
)aper (I know not if it be so still) that stood out alone 
Lmong its brethren in the West ; the others, down to their 
mallest item, were defaced with capitals, head lines, 
lUitrations, swaggering misquotations, and the shoddy 
)icturesque and unpathetic pathos of the Harry Millers : 
he Occidental alone appeared to be written by a dull, 
ane. Christian gentleman, singly desirous of communi- 
:ating knowledge." Without either minute or industrious 
earch I jotted down the following items. The mere 
enumeration of them reads like the headlines of movie 
hockers ! I omit the daily long list of births and deaths, 
engagements, elopements, marriages, and the usual West- 
ern array of divorces. There were tales of heroism of 
oldiers and of nurses in the daily business of war. 
rhere were articles about an insane woman, an embezzle- 
nent, a suicide, a murder, a trial for poisoning. There 
vas a story of the arrest of a released prisoner for petty 
heft one minute after he had finished serving his former 



26 JOSEPH CONRAD 

sentence, side by side with the account of a woman wh| 
gave her blood in transfusion to save the hfe of an irj 
jured man. I read of the explosion of bombs at a railwai 
station, of anarchy in Russia, of civil war in Costa Ric? 
I was fascinated by the story of a quest for "untoli 
wealth." Read a paragraph or two of the unembellishe 
newspaper narrative of this last event: 

"Men have heeded the call of lost sapphires, and 
within the week the little eighty-ton schooner 
"Casco," that carried Robert Louis Stevenson to the 
islands of romance, will poke her nose through the 
Golden Gate and head for the frozen northland . . . 

"Many centuries ago when China was young, there 
was a great war. The most powerful king led his 
armies to battle and vanquished the other armies. 
Then he died. 

"The king had been noted for his fondness of 
sapphires. His subjects, worshipping his memory, 
made annual pilgrimages to his tomb, and each de- 
posited at the burial place one or two sapphires. 
That insured the pilgrim's speedy entry into the 
happy hereafter. 

"Centuries passed, as is their wont. A natural 
disaster swept away the tomb, and nothing remained 
except the legend. Then the glacier that had covered 
the tomb wore away, and an adventurer that traveled 
the North found the treasure. 

"The man carried away all the sapphires he could 
carry. He planned to return for the rest, but he died 
too soon. 

"The men of the "Casco" have a map, they say, 
that directs them to a spot beyond the beyond, far 
north in Northern Siberia, where lie heaps and heaps 
of sapphires that the worshippers laid at the tomb 
of the 'Great One'." 

How will those thirty men come out of that adventure. 
How will those thirty lonely souls react upon each other 
What a Conrad tale lies hidden there! 

Well, here you have in one morning's paper, heape 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM V 

romiscuously together, love, joy, tragedy, suffering, self- 
icrifice, heroism and depravity, insanity and crime, revo- 
ition and anarchy, adventure and buried treasure. This 

the material out of which Joseph Conrad has built his 
ories : a search for buried gold, the explosion of a bomb, 
le plotting of anarchists and spies, a revolution in Costa 
.ica and another in Spain, shipwrecks and pirates, canni- 
alism and savagery, murder, love, beauty, fate, self- 
Peking, and heroism. 

Yet such events as these, which lie at the heart of all 
Romance, become in the hands of Conrad not in the least 
lere exciting adventures in the circumstantial objective 
ense, but adventures far more tense and intricate, ad- 
entures of the spirit. Every story which he has written 
; a psychological study of the soul of a man or a woman, 
better than any other writer, Conrad has succeeded in 
onveying to us the sense of the profound mystery that 
/raps every human being, that perception we all have 
f "man's incapacity for self-realization," that puzzled 
ympathy with man's suffering, that recognition of the 
rony of fate, of the inscrutability of nature, of the eternal 
lutability of all things ; and finally our baffled realization 
hat at the end, even, nothing is clear. Such is life in 
ctuality, and such is life in Conrad's tales. 

With the poetic imagination of the Romanticist and the 
ninute observation of the Realist, Conrad assembles into 
in impersonal study of motives, conduct, and character 
hat is at once as restrained and as passionate as life 
tself, those incongruous and startling incidents, or those 
ipparently matter-of-fact occurrences which side by side 
hrong past us in daily existence. On the significance 



28 JOSEPH CONRAD j 

of these happenings Conrad fixes our attention, alwJ 
with the high purpose of presenting Hfe as it actually is/ 
In the famous artistic creed, written in 1905, and no 
published as the Preface to The Nigger of the Narcissil 
Conrad has unflinchingly and clearly proclaimed his belii 
m this fundamental verity of all true art in fiction. T\\ 
very conjunction of words in the title to this book t 
which, he says, he is willing to stand or fall, is emblemat: 
of Conrad's vision of life. He says in part: 

''A work that aspires, however humbly, to the con- 
dition of art should carry its justification in every 
line. And art itself may be defined as a single- 
minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice 
m.l f yj^^ble "diverse, by bringing to light the truth, 
manifold and one, underlying its every aspect. 
'.^ 1 \l artist then, like the thinker or the scientist, 
seeks the truth and makes his appeal. . But the 
artist appeals to that part of our being which is a gift 
and not an acquisition— and. therefore, more perma- 
nently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for 
delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery sur- 
rounding our lives: to our sense of pity and beauty 
and pain: to the latent feeling of fellowship with all 
creation— and to the subtle but invincible conviction 
of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of 
innumerable hearts to the solidarity in dreams in 
joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope in 
fear, which binds men to each other, which binds' all 
humanity— the dead to the living and the living to the 
unborn. ... To snatch in a moment of courage, from 
the remorseless rush of time, a passing phase of life 
IS only the beginning of the task. The task ap- 
proached in tenderness and faith is to hold up 
unquestioningly, without choice and without fear, the 
rescued fragment before all eyes in the light of a 
sincere mood. It is to show its vibration, its color 
Its form; and through its movement, its lorm and its 
color, reveal the substance of its truth— disclose its 
inspiring secret: the stress and passion within the 
core of each convincing moment. In a single-minded 
attempt of that kind, if one be deserving and fortun- 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 29 

1 ate, one may perchance attain to such clearness of 
sincerity that at last the presented vision of regret 
or pity, of terror or mirth, shall awaken in the hearts 
of the beholders that feeling of unavoidable soli- 
darity; of the solidarity in mysterious origin, in toil, 
in joy, in hope, in uncertain fate, which binds men to 
each other and all mankind to the visible world." 

This is the Summum Bonum of literary endeavor. It 
'mot be confined within the narrow Hmits of ReaHsm 
of Romance. There is no term which fully compre- 
ids its whole import. If it were permissible, we might 
smpt to coin a word, Aletheism (Greek, 'AXi^Oeta, 
th) the truth of life; that would best express it. But 
:n the most philological of invented words is awkward ; 
1 instead we must substitute the circumlocution Ro- 
ntic-Realism. 
n what ways, then, has Conrad fulfilled his own creed? 



PART II 



The Romantic-Realism of Method in Plot and 
Character Development 

ONE of the most individual of the many distincti^ 
things about Conrad is his method of presentii' 
his stories. It has irritated some critics, pleased other 
puzzled them all. Many times objected to, it has bee 
more often defended, especially by the later writers aboi 
Conrad who have come to see that the intricacy of h' 
method is the expression of the man himself. Hem! 
James has said that it seems to him that Conrad ht 
deliberately set himself the problem of doing a thing i| 
the hardest way possible for pure pleasure in the difficultj 
of the task. Certain it is that a Conrad story seldoj 
presents itself as a straightforward narrative in the ol 
comfortable chronological sequence of cause and effec 
ditto, ditto, to the climax of events, which, the formuU 
propone, should be usually, — in stories of adventure (| 
mystery, always, — as surprising as possible, and deco 
ously saved until the very end of the tale. In oth( 
words, we have grown used to the cut-and-dried plot q 
incident that fulfills all expectations and leaves character 
and situations settled forever afterwards. 

But Conrad does not often construct his stories in th| 
conventional way. He has been accused of having no plJ 

30 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 33 

a certain situation, as in Lord Jim. for example, and 
■adually we learn how he came to be where he is; or 
e stop in the middle of an episode to pick up the tnreads 
E past events that will account for the state of mmd 
r the actions which are to follow, as in Under Western 
yes or Nostromo or Victory; ox we face an unaccount- 
ble condition of affairs and are forced to go back to 
race out little by little how it came to be, as m I he 
lianer of the Narcissus or Heart of Darkness. 

A man's previous history may be only implied until 
ite in the book when it becomes necessary to reveal the 
:,hole story in order to explain the effect of his person- 
lity on others, and lead us to see how he alone could 
ie the agent in succeeding events. Dr. Monyghams 
tory for example, is not told until nearly three hundred 
Ind fifty pages of the novel in which he .s one of the 
mportant characters have been read. Often, it is to be 
admitted, these sudden pauses in the rapid development 
,f events is irritating. We are out of patience with the 
ong exposition of Sotillo's maneuvers in the middle of 
-he most tense situation in Nostromo. Sometimes these 
mterruptions appear wholly irrelevant, as when we stop 
to listen to the past history of the Chief Inspector or 
read a description of the most minor characters who do 
nothing in the story but form the partners in an insignifi- 
cant game of cards, or read a picture of the previous 
Police Commissioners of London in The Secret Agent. 
It is difficult to restrain our impatience when Marlow 
digresses from the story of Lord Jim to give us the biog- 
raphies of such unimportant personages as little Bob 
Stanton or Chester and Captain Robinson, picturesque 



34 JOSEPH CONRAD 

as they are. Mr. Conrad's enthusiasm over the detal 
of conversation as well as over the actuality of the bac|l 
ground figures, leads him into over-emphasis on whJ« 
amounts to a quite banal conversation between There? s 
and Monsieur George in one of his latest booki^ 
The Arrow of Gold. We even have to stop to learn whi 
It IS that Therese does not recognize a brougham wheP 
she sees one. Such minute detail, realistic though it U^ 
has degenerated into a mannerism. j 

- Since Conrad's object is to make the story known a^" 
It would be m actuality, it is necessary that the events b^ 
retold after they have happened. In order to do thi^ 
-Conrad uses a mouthpiece. The most famous is ol 
course, Marlow. As to whether Marlow is to be identi f 
fied with Conrad himself, much has been written Mari 
ow, whether he be Conrad in person or not, is symbolic: ^ 
We know real facts about him: that he is a retired see ^ 
captam of middle age, for he joined the service when he 1' 
was "just twenty," and "it was twenty-two years ago' 
that he has "sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion 'a 
straight back, an ascetic aspect," that his experiences^^ 
have made him somewhat cynical, vastly conscious of the 
irony of life, but unabatingly interested in all humanjp 
beings. He tells their stories in his own desultory in- 
volved, and unending way, impersonally aloof "in the pose 
of a meditating Buddha." He has an immitigable curi- 
osity and we hear again when he is in a reminiscent f 
mood the discoveries of that curiosity. In the new pre-'™ 
face to Lord Jhn which first appeared in an article in 
The Bookman, Conrad answers the objection that no 
one could believe that one man could talk for interminable 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 35 

lOurs like Marlow and hold his audience. "After think- 
ng it over for something like sixteen years I am not so 
ure about that," he writes. *'Men have been known both 
n the tropics and in the temperate zone, to sit up half 
he night * swapping yarns' . . . As to the mere physical 
)Ossibility we all know that some speeches in Parliament 
lave taken nearer six hours than three in delivery; 
vihereas all that part of the book which is Marlow's 
larrative can be read through aloud, I should say, in less 
han three hours." 

Marlow holds his readers as he holds his hearers. 
Phrough his mind we come to understand Lord Jim, 
"lora de Barral, the officers of the "Judea." The young 
nate wiho tells the tale of Falk or the young captain of 
rhe Secret Sharer might well be Marlow. We cannot 
lelp but feel that Mills, the inscrutable, "with his pene- 
ration" in The Arrow of Gold is only Marlow under a 
lew name and in a different body. But Mills, "the burly, 
he rustic," is not so convincing as the lean and worn 
barlow, nor does he tell us the tale as he saw it happen. 

Sometimes Marlow relates the story as a firsthand ex- 
)erience of his own, sometimes as others have told it to 
lim, even, as in Chance, as others have learned it from 
»thers who have told it to him ; so that we get that most 
ubtle play of mind on mind, the uttermost refinement of 
he narrative point of view, like the cross Hghts of a 
nultiple reflector. Many of the stories are told in the 
mpersonal third person of the author, as are Nostromo 
nd The Secret Agent and most of the short stories ; some 
ti the first person, when they are confessedly reminis- 
ences of Conrad himself, as Almayer's Folly, and, we 



36 JOSEPH CONRAD 

feel sure, The Shadow Line; or in the first person by 
one of the dramatis personse, as The Arrow of Gold. In 
Under Western Eyes the point of view is more labored. 
The story is told in the first person by the English teacher 
of languages, partly as firsthand experiences of his own, 
partly as direct transcribing of Razumov's journal, partly 
as resume of portions of the journal. But the effect is 
not always convincing. In any case, Conrad, as I have 
said, is anxious to avoid the traditional novelist's om 
niscience. Even in tales of the third person like 
Nostromo, much of the narrative is told by Captain 
Mitchell. Conrad even goes so far as to resort to literary 
devices. In the same novel it is through Martin Decoud's 
letters to his sister (one of them written under circum- 
stances preposterous even to our indulgent credulity) 
that we learn what has been happening. The diary of 
Razumov in Under Western Eyes, the pages of Kurtz' 
manuscript in Heart of Darkness, the letters of Captain 
MacWhirr, Solomon Rout, and Jukes in Typhoon, the 
reminiscences of Monsieur George in The Arrow of Gold; 
are other examples of this device. 

In this later novel Conrad has attempted to disarm the 
critics by writing a straightforward story, but his innate 
propensity to retrogressive narrative gets the better of 
him even here. The situation, the place, the time, and the 
characters are carefully explained to the reader in a pre- 
paratory "Note," and the subsequent events in so far as 
they are known (observe the Conradian reservation), in a 
second note at the end. In spite of all this elaborate pre- 
hminary explanation, however, we progress in the story in 
the customary elliptical manner. We stop and mark time 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 37 

while Blunt tells Dona Rita's past history, or while Rita 
herself recounts in fuller detail what we have already 
learned briefly of iher childhood days, — the epoch in her 
life that furnishes the key 'to the whole story of her actions. 

Sometimes the preliminary narrative is definitely sym- 
bolic as is the Prelude in Nostromo. Sometimes the con- 
clusion is told us long before the whole thread of the plot 
has been unraveled. Twice in Nostromo, more than a 
hundred pages before the end, we are carried forward, 
and then go back to learn the events that completed the 
crisis in the story at which we had been halted. In Under 
Western Eyes the whole of the second and third parts 
happens after the larger portion of the fourth part. By 
the time we have reached Part IV we have, of course, 
surmised the facts we are to learn in it. Again in The 
Rescue, although the unfolding of the plot is for the most 
part simple and direct, Conrad has several times resorted 
to retroaction to interpret a present situation. At the end 
of the story the explanation of the stroke of fate by which 
Lingard, the indomitable, ihas been transformed into the 
crushed and dazed figure which arouses in us, as in young 
Carter, solicitude and compassion, involves a succession 
of steps backward through the preceding thirty-six hours. 

This retrospective method of narration is startling until 
we realize that Conrad has been trusting to our intuition 
of the denouement. In fact, we should be stupid indeed 
if we did not perceive the inevitable outcome of what 
has passed before our eyes, for we have had sign after 
sign laid before us. Here again Conrad departs from 
the strictness of realistic method to sound the romantic 
note of forewarning. Not a single one of his stories is 



38 JOSEPH CONRAD 

constructed without it. Time and time again we are told 
of the "something ominous," or meet a "startled pause" i 
in the trend of events. It may be a premonition, as it is 
sometimes in daily life, like Marlow's uneasiness on be- t 
ginning his voyage to the heart of darkness ; it may be * 
a prediction like that of Captain Giles about the dangers ' 
of the Gulf of Siam to the young captain in The Shadow j 
Line; it may be an incident that should have served for I 
a portent as the narrator realizes too late, such as ! 
Monsieur George's strange encounter with the comic ' 
Mephistophelean Ortega; it may be mere superstition, as 
when the rats left the "Judea" after it was supposed that 
she was at last in ship-shape condition. In some stories 
Conrad himself deliberately hints of events to come, as 
often in Nostromo. Frequently the forewarnings are 
symbolic. This is true of the descriptions of setting, 
notably in Almayers Folly, Heart of Darkness, The 
Secret Agent, Nostromo. Even the title may be a symbol, 
as in The Arrow of Gold. The characters themselves 
may openly declare the symbolism, as do both Rita and 
Monsieur George of the arrow, piercing yet golden, and 
finally vanished forever. The name of Lingard's brig is 
symbolic of the lightning flash of beauty and of passion 
with the thunderbolts of fate that is woven in golden 
threads throughout the- setting in The Rescue. 

When after nights of fruitless agony, Razumov wakes 
to gaze on the lamp in his study and finds it burned out, 
he calls it in bitter forecast, "the extinguished beacon 
of his labors, a cold object of brass and porcelain, among 
the scattered pages of his notes and small piles of books — 
a mere litter of blackened paper — dead matter — without 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 39 

gnificance or interest." With Russian mysticism, as he 
2turns from his confession, dripping wet from the 
lunder-storm that has passed over him, he mutters in 
nswer ito the sohcitude of his landlord, "Yes, I am 
ashed clean/' Many seemingly chance remarks of the 
haracters prove to be symbolic premonitions of events. 
)ne of the most conscious of these is Seiiora's Teresa's 
urse on Nostromo when he refuses to go for a priest 
s she lies dying. 

Sometimes these forecasts are ironical as well as sym- 
olic. But usually it is not until the story is well 
dvanced that we become aware of the pregnancy of these 
rief statements. A great part of the intensity of the 
risis in The Secret Agent arises from the ironic prevision 
f what is to happen. 'The excellent husband of Winnie 
/"erloc saw no writing on the wall." And later, "Mr. 
/erloc wallowed on his back. But he longed for a more 
)erfect rest— for sleep — for a few hours of delicious 
orgetfulness. That would come later." In how differ- 
nt a way from what he had meant was that fateful 
entence fulfilled ! 

In some of the tales, and particularly in the later books, 
his dramatic forewarning, ironic or symbolic or both, 
)ecomes the motif of the story and occurs again and again 
ke a varied refrain. In Nostromo the theme of the evil 
nfluence of the San Tome silver mine that enslaved and 
leadened all, is sounded in the Prelude, and reechoes 
hroughout the long story until the book closes on the 
5ame note when we hear Linda's "true cry of love and 
^rief that seemed to ring aloud from Punta Mala to 
\zuera and away to the bright line of the horizon, over- 



40 JOSEPH CONRAD 

hung by a big white cloud shining Hke a mass of soU(| 
silver." In Chance the dominant note is struck in thr||, 
title and sounds again and again throughout the story 
In The Arrow of Gold we hear from the beginning tdp 
the end the theme of the symbolism of Rita in whom i 
''something of the women of all time," whose face "drevi 
irresistibly one's gaze to itself by an indefinable quality jr 
of charm beyond all analysis and made you think of re 
mote races, of strange generations, of the faces of womeri 
sculptured on immemorial monuments and of those lyin^|ii 
unsung in their tombs." Rita herself says, "I am as ok 
as the world." 

Because of this use of an ever-recurrent theme anc 
of many premonitions, Conrad may be thought definitel) 
to renounce all attempt to surprise or mystify his readers 
Yet there are episodes in all of his stories which puzzh 
us as much as the actors themselves, others which keef 
us in breathless suspense, others which confound us with 
their unexpectedness. Who can ever forget that tens(|l 
situation in Nostromo when Decoud and the capataz dc 
cargadores, crossing the gulf with the treasure, in the 
blackness of the night as if "launched into space," are^ 
projected suddenly into that startling adventure with 
Hirsh and Sotillo's fleet? The strain is almost as severej( 
on us as on the composure of the actors themselves 
The Secret Sharer is one tense question from beginning!}] 
to end. Will he be discovered? We shudder at everyu 
narrow escape. The suspense and mystery of the first 
part of The Secret Agent is spoiled only for those wholtl 
have been so unfortunate as to have read beforehand a;ci 
book review that reveals the whole plot. In The Arrown 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 41 

f Gold we are as taken aback as Monsieur George to 
hd when he turns around in what he supposed an empty 
Dom, "a woman's dress on a chair, other articles of 
pparel scattered about." The sudden explosion of the 
oal in the hold of the "J^dea" when "everybody was on 
le broad grin" after their successful quenching of the 
re, leaves our eyes like saucers, and our mouths open 
)o. The unexpected climax of Big Brierley's history, 
i Lord Jim, is as astonishing as it was to those who knew 
im in real life. We are as horror-struck as the young 
aptain in The Shadow Line to make the fateful discovery 
lat there is no quinine on his fever-ridden ship. 

Often this suspense in which we have been held tense 
hd the sudden crash of the unexpected are accompanied 
y a terror that is Homeric in its minuteness of horrible 
etail. Impressed upon our memory by the very horror 
f it is the scene of finding Hirsh's body in Nostromo, 
r the uncanny burial of James Wait in The Nigger of the 
larcissus, or the gruesome description of the mangled 
emains of Ste^vie in The Secret Agent. 

Sometimes the mystery of the plot is solved for us, 
s in The Secret Agent or Talk. ^ More often it is a 
lystery of character which is left forever baffling. The 
olution lies in our own ability to read between the lines 
if what is told us. Such is the mystery of The Arrow 
f Gold; such, too, is the mystery of The Heart of Dark- 
less. It is interesting to contrast with the latter a story 
ailed Out There by Grant Watson in which everything 
hat Conrad only implies is elaborately made clear; the 
ontrast serves to show the power of Conrad's method 
tf repression. 



42 JOSEPH CONRAD 

This same repression appears also as condensation o 

narrative; and in this respect Conrad's tales are unlike th'| 

romantic stories of adventure in which each new deec 

of the hero is detailed at full length. How many dhap 

ters might Scott or even Stevenson have made of this on( 

brief sentence that falls in the heart of the novel ! I 

i 
"One evening I found myself weary, heartsore, my , 
brain still dazed and with awe in my heart entering ' 
Marseilles by way of the railway station, after many [ 
adventures, one more disagreeable than another, in- 
volving privations, great exertions, a lot of difficulties 
with all sorts of people who looked upon me evidently jij 
more as a discreditable vagabond deserving the atten- 
tion of gendarmes than a respectable (if crazy) young 
gentleman attended by a guardian angel of his own." 

We never hear any more of this part of his adventures-; 
it has no bearing on the main theme. Anyway, it hac 
all been told before in the story of "The Tremolino" ir 
The Mirror of the Sea. 

This restraint in selection is governed by the theme o:" 
the story and by the dominant traits of the charactersf 
To Conrad these two become one. The motivation o 
the characters is the theme of the story. Nothing arise? J 
in the course of events which is not the outcome o: 
character; for in Conrad, in the same sense as is true ir 
Shakespeare, character is destiny, plus that inexplicabk 
something, call it accident or pure fate, that the grea' 
creative writers of all time have seen unfolding befon 
their eyes in human life. Each of Conrad's tales becomes " 
then, an adventure of a soul, that new kind of adventunf' 
which Ernest Rhys speaks of in his essay on Romance 
'Tt may even be said that today we have widened th( 
avenues of imagination, instead of closing them, as man) 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 43 

Dple suppose ; for we have learned to find in new areas, 
d in the more intimate regions of psychology, spiritual 
ventures which are more real than anything told in 
'. romances of chivalry." Almost inevitably the out- 
ne of the adventure is tragedy, for Conrad sees as 
: irony of life that the predominating quality of a man's 
iracter is invariably the one that fate chooses to try. 

times man is triumphant, at times the victor is fate: 
stromo's colossal belief in his own incorruptibihty and' 

eager desire to uphold his reputation for absolute 
stworthiness prove in the end the means to his undoing, 
rd Jim eating his heart out with a sense of his lost 
lor, Kurtz avid of power, Heyst determined to be the 
ptical onlooker, Razumov unfaithful to the supreme 
fidence imposed in him, Captain MacWhirr un- 
uainted with imaginative fear, are all of them drawn 
) the mesh of circumstance that chance weaves around 
11 to put to the proof that particular quality. Conrad's 
1 and women are "haunted by a fixed idea," to use 
own phrase. It is Conrad's object to discover "a 
plete singleness of motive behind the varied mani- 
ations of a consistent character." Every link in the 
es of happenings is chosen to fix our attention upon 
temperamental uniqueness that constitutes the indi- 
lal. 

very story thus becomes the history of one being 
md which are grouped the other personages of the 
, to further or obstruct the life of the protagonist, 
i Jim, Almayer's Folly, The End of the Tether, Talk, 
th, Heart of Darkness, center around one figure 
se personality is the focus of the whole story. Be- 



^ JOSEPH CONRAD 

cause of the intimacy of human relationships, most of t 
novels draw close within the circle of the hfe of t|^ 
chief character that one other human bemg as markec 
individual as himself. These are the women whose p. ^ 
sonality involves the fate of the men. Wmnie VerL 
Lena Natalie Haldin, Nina, Dona Rita, Edith Trave 
are inseparable from the articulated pattern of the pi 
In such masterpieces as The Nigger of the Narcissus a 
Nostromo this narrowed character focus has expanc 
to include the whole character groups, so vital and' 
real that the book takes on epic proportions. We 
moving in a world of human beings as various and 
crowded as the real universe. We are as convinced 
their actuality as we are of that of the people we km. 
y All of Conrad's characters have in them that univ 
sality which we call type; but it is the type arising fr 
established careers or environments rather than fi 
personality itself. The largest class of these typee| 
men of the sea: sailors, mates, captains; adventurers 
derelicts. Men of the land, too, are there: anarchi 
plotters of revolutions and of bomb outrages ; occasion 
financiers, men of the world of society. And amj 
them we meet the women, fewer in number, all witj 
certain mysterious quality in their taciturnity, whe' j, 
they be savage or cockney, women respectably bourge- 
or picaresque. But it is in the minor characters (j 
that we find pure type in Conrad ; and that is in those .^ 
are needed to fill in the background, like the S( .^ 
Americans in Nostromo or the Chinamen in Typhoor^ 
the lesser revolutionists in Under Western Eyes. Se\ 
photographic portraits of individuals in the crowd s 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 45 

suggest the milieu in which the story is to move ; but 
[r the most part these minor personages are a back- 
Dund mass which our imaginations are to conjure up 
)m the selected types given us. * It is not for type that 
.nrad is seeking, but for the individual.^ It is m the, 
liviuahty of personaUty that his interest hes. To 
irch out the intimate motives and the inexpressible 
:rets of each man or woman who moves through those 
'xumstances in which it has pleased hfe to place them 
the problem of his tales ; only in this respect can Conrad 

called a writer of problem novels. He never preaches, 
e puts before us as some one else has seen it the 
tions of another human being, and lets us create with 
m the thoughts, the motives, the resolves which led to 
ose actions. 
For this reason, too, then, he needs an interpreter. It 

only by glimpses that we comprehend other people, 
his is true even of those whom we know best and flatter 
irselves that we understand most thoroughly,— those 
hom we say we can read like a book. How much more 
■ this true of those whom we know only casually! 
isual impressions, disconnected incidents at occasional 
eetings only, reported conversations, supposed motives, 
lust be put together to form our estimate of the man 
imself. Our own imagination and reason must fit the 
-agments, large or small, symmetrical or irregular, into 
ie mosaic of the whole until the completed design stand 
bvealed. There are bound to be some blank spaces in 
le end, some still remaining mystery that blurs the colors 
nd the clear outlines. 

The history of others can be reflected only through the 



46 JOSEPH CONRAD 






medium of another personality. To create the y^y 
simihtude of this medium is Conrad's object. Therefo 
we find almost always when we are introduced to ear 
important character the indirect method of expositu' 
proceeding by degrees to the direct. We hear of So-an 
So first in a casual way: that it is Mrs. Gould, the on 
English woman in Sulaco, who has given old Giorg 
Viola his Bible in Italian ; or that it is Captain Mitchell 
capataz de cargadores to whom all the Europeans ; 
Sulaco owe their preservation in the recent revolution,- 1 
"Nostromo, a man absolutely above reproach/* the meil 
sight of whose black whiskers and white teeth was enough 
to quell all the town leperos. Marlow tells the authc 
that there was only one of Mrs. Fyne's girl-friends whon 
he had conversed with at all, and proceeds to narrate the 
accidental and unusual meeting. "Her arched eyebrow 
frowned above her blanched face. . . . She looke( 
unhappy." Slowly we comprehend that this rude an' 
bitter girl is the heroine around the riddle of whose per 
sonality is to revolve this strange tale of Chance. Mil 
who has seen Dofia Rita only twice, can already say a 
her : "I am not an easy enthusiast where women are cor 
cerned, but she was without doubt the most admirabl 
find of his amongst all the priceless items he had accumu 
lated in that house — the most admirable." 

I When we are at length introduced to the^ character t. 
talk with him or to observe him in person, we receive 
first of all, a general impression of physical appearance 
it may be only of the most notable traits of dress or o 
feature. Mrs. Gould is the only lady present at tb 
ceremony of the turning of the first sod for the Nations 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 47 

intral Railway of Costaguana, and we know her at once 

we read, "Mrs. Gould's appearance was made youthful 

the mobile intelligence of her face." Gradually we 

irn to know that she is a little lady with a low laugh 

d gray eyes, "her little face attractively overweighted 

great coils of hair, whose mere parting seemed to 

eathe upon you the fragrance of frankness and gener- 

ity." But before this we have come to perceive her 

v^acity, her charm, and her sympathetic influence on 

who know her. It is not until he has been taking an 

tive part in the story that has progressed nearly a 

indred and fifty pages that we see what Nostromo 

^lly looks like. True to this point of view, Razumov's 

pearance is not described to us until the narrator of 

e story, the language teacher, meets him in person when 

e tale is already half told. 

Sometimes, on the contrary, the method is frankly 
ect. Almayer's Folly and Lord Jim, for example, open 
th a picture of the hero and an explanation of what he 
doing; then the narrative goes back immediately to a 
ief summary of his past life, and there begins the long 
)ry of what has led him to where he now is. The 
ginnings of // Conde and of Typhoon are excellent 
amples of this method of Conrad's. In these stories 
observe first the hero's appearance, and then we 
rn briefly his biography up to the day when the story 
^ins. The stage directions are completed; the action 
1 begin. 

Conrad uses both methods, then: he begins at once 

th a fairly full description of the character, followed 

a bit of biography and an explanation of his psy- 



48 JOSEPH CONRAD 

chology; or he leads us slowly to an acquaintance wi 
the body and soul of the man himself. In the earlic 
novels he more frequently employs the first method wi 
special stress on the most striking qualities, emphasiz; 
in the rest of the story by constant reiteration, and 
vealed by every incident in the series of events. In 1 
later books, however, he is more inclined to use the cum! 
lative method, sometimes, in fact, carrying it almost 
an extreme, as in The Arrow of Gold, in which t, 
portrait of Rita is pieced together item by item until 
are well into the story before we are sure of what s; 
really is like, — if we are ever wholly sure! 

As the story progresses, the impression that the chs 
acter makes tends to be simplified into one marked trcj 
It may be the same that first acquaintance gave us;: 
may have shifted to another emphasis. The charac 
has come to have for all with whom it is associated 
the other characters, narrator and reader — one sign 
cance. In order to crystallize this impression. Com 
resorts to the Homeric emphasis of descriptive epith 
These are woven in and out through the narrative 1 
recurrent patterns in a design. We learn to love M 
Gould's "little head and shining coils of hair" ; the beai 
ful Antonia appears always as "a tall grave girl" w, 
"full red lips"; Charles Gould in his "imperturba 
calm" is "the impenetrability of the embodied Goi 
Concession." Nostromo appears in everyone's eyes, 
eluding his own, as "a man for whom the value of I 
seems to consist in personal prestige." In The Nigti 
of the Narcissus Donkin's "bat-like ears," his "shi, 
eyes, and yellow hatchet-face" are emblematic of his 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 49 

ience among the crew. The derelict shade of Jorgensen 
the tragic anticipation of what destiny has in store for 
ingard. It is the bitter irony of Razumov's fate "to 
spire confidence" in every one with whom he comes 
to contact, most tragically of all in "clear-eyed" Natalie 
aldin. Winnie Verloc's "philosophy consisted in not 
king notice of the inside facts"; she "felt profoundly 
lat things do not stand much looking into" ; she was 
:onfirmed in her instinctive conviction that things don't 
ar looking into much"; she was aware that "it did not 
and looking into much." In fact, in some of the later 
3oks, these epithetical phrases degenerate into mere 
itahwords. Winnie later in the novel becomes ironically 
he widow of Mr. Verloc." Ossipon is "the robust 
•ssipon" ; Verloc is "the heavy-lidded." In The Arrow 
f Gold Blunt is tagged in three phrases, two of them 
f his own invention: he is "the fatal Mr. Blunt," 
Americain, CathoHque et gentilhomme," "who lived by 
3 sword." Rita in the same novel is the tawny-haired, 
le sapphire-eyed, for "the tawny halo of her unruly hair" 
ad her "darkly-brilliant blue glance" shine resplendent 
irough all the pages of Monsieur George's reminiscences. 
In the portraits of minor characters this exaggeration 
f t)he significant attribute stands out as a caricature 
f the man, — unforgettable, decisive and comic. Such is 
le steward in The Shadow Line "with his face of an 
nhappy goat"; the comic-opera General Montero in 
ostromo, the abominable and fatuous Ortega. In 
'^nder Western Eyes the artificiality of the famous 
ladame de S — is emphasized by her ghastly painted 
lask of a face, her gleaming false teeth, and fantastically 



50 JOSEPH CONRAD 

shining black eyes. No less grotesque in appearance ij 
her scared, sallow- faced companion and even the hug€|[l 
Peter Ivanovitch himself. In The Secret Agent the un-)! 
wieldy bulk of Michaelis is emphasized in every phrase^ 
as when he "uncrossed his thick legs, similar to bolsters.*! 

It is indeed in descriptions of fat men that Conrac- 
derives a sardonic amusement from this over-emphasis o\\ 
the grotesque. There is this same Michaelis, "round likt 
a tub" ; Mr. Verloc, "undemonstrative and burly in i\ 
fat-pig style," with podgy hands and a gross neck; ancj 
Sir Ethelred, "expanded, enormous and weighty," — three; 
exaggeratedly fat men in one book ! More unforgettable 
is. the obese captain of the Patna, like "*a trained bab) 
elephant walking on hind legs," and the manager of thet 
Eldorado Exploring Expedition in Heart of DarknesS\ 
who "carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his short, 
legs," and the terrible revolutionist Nikita surnamec( 
Necator whose squeaky voice and balloon-like stomacH 
are in burlesque contrast to his sinister deeds of violences 

But it is only the unpleasant characters whom Conraci 
lashes with these cutting realistic phrases. His portraits, 
can be as attractive as the persons themselves. There is 
Lord Jim "clean-limbed, clear-faced, firm on his feet, as 
promising a boy as the sun ever shone on," the type ol 
fine, dependable, honest, and courageous youngster, whosi 
appearance so mysteriously and terribly belied what he' 
stood accused of. There is Powell in Chance. "Th^ 
red tint of his clear-cut face with trim short blaclj 
whiskers under a cap of curly iron-gray hair was the onlj 
warm spot in the dinginess of that room cooled by the 
cheerless tablecloth." 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 51 

But a man who has Uved long enough to have acquired 
hat complexity of experience which shapes him as an 
adividual worth the investigation of this novehst, is 
eldom in point of fact a being to be described in terms 
f the beautiful. He may be picturesque, he may be 
l.ttractive in his virility, he will probably be interesting, 
•ut he does not usually impress one sesthetically. A 
oung man may be handsome and good to look upon like 

ord Jim ; but in youth that is generally to be taken for 
rranted. Grown men are too marked by time and endur- 
nce to present that color, serenity, and grace of human 
ontour and feature that are the essence of beauty, 
lence it is that in the descriptions of men Conrad uses 
he uncompromising method of the Realist; and reserves 
he suggestiveness and poetry of the Romantic style for 
iescriptions of nature and of women. He turns for 
eauty to women in the bloom of youth or of love. How 
nany of them there are, after all ! Emilia Gould, 
Vntonia Avellanos, Linda Viola, and her sister Giselle, 

lora de Barral, Natalie Haldin, that magnificent young 
^irl, the niece of Hermann in Falk, even fair-haired Edith 
Travers, the "representative woman," Nina, Almayer's 
lalf-breed daughter, and last and most haunting, Doiia 
lita, ''the harmonized sweetness and daring of whose 
ace" holds every man and woman in thrall with its fate- 
"ul beauty. She is not pretty. She is worse, as Mills 
ells her. She has the symbolic power of a Mona Lisa 
is she sits "tenderly amiable yet somehow distant, among 
ier cushions, with an immemorial seriousness in her long, 
.haded eyes, and her fugitive smile hovering about but 



52 JOSEPH CONRAD 

never settling on her lips." "Man is a strange animal," 
writes Monsieur George long afterwards. 

"I didn't care what I said. All I wanted was to 
keep her in her pose, excited and still, sitting up with 
her hair loose, softly glowing, and the dark brown fur 
making a wonderful contrast with the white lace on 
her breast. All I was thinking of was that she was 
adorable and too lovely for words! I cared for noth- 
ing but that sublimely aesthetic impression. It 
summed up all life, all joy, all poetry! It had a 
divine strain." 

Here is the symbolic essence of romance. 

As perfect is this lyric on Giselle from Nostromo. 

"Coppery glints rippled to and fro on the wealth of 
her gold hair. Her smooth forehead had the soft, 
pure sheen of a priceless pearl in the splendor of the 
sunset, mingling the gloom of starry spaces, the 
purple of the sea, and the crimson of the sky in mag- 
nificent stillness." 

It is her voice that best expresses the woman, her 
character and her soul. Each man surrenders to its^ 
magic. To Nostromo Giselle speaks "in a voice that re 
called to him the song of running water, the tinkling of 
a silver bell." The music of Rita's voice thrills and 
fascinates as men listen to its "warm waves" "with 
ripple of badinage," and "its even, mysterious quality 
Heyst is enchanted by Lena's voice. Woman expresses 
to Conrad with her voice the 

"Wisdom of the heart, which, having no concern 
with the erection or demolition of theories any more 
than with the defence of prejudices, has no random 
words at its command. The words it pronounces 
have the value of acts of integrity, tolerance and 
compassion." 



1 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 53 

In their veiled gaze, the inscrutability of their smile, the 
abstraction of their quietude, all of Conrad's women are 
emblematic of the mystery of "the incarnation of the 
feminine," for women and the sea are "the two mistresses 
of life's values, — the iUimitable greatness of the one, and 
the unfathomable seduction of the other working their 
immemorial spells from generation to generation," in 
"that beautiful world of their own" where men must 
help them stay lest theirs get worse. 

Portraiture is one vehicle of character revelation. It 
is the expression in technique of that article of Conrad's 
artistic creed which Ford Madox Huefifer has summar- 
ized as "Never comment : state." The first article of that 
creed, however, Mr. Huefifer says may be epigramatized 
as "Never state: present." And this is how Conrad 
renders character through the plot of the story. Every 
action, every conversation, every recoUective remark, 
brings us one step nearer to an understanding of the man 
or woman created before us. The chain of happenings 
is the unfolding of the character of the dramatis personae. 

One incident alone may be a key to the man's whole 
subsequent conduct. The exasperatingly ludicrous epi- 
sode of the Siamese flag lays bare before us the character 
of the sensitive, imaginative Jukes and the stolid, literal- 
minded Captain MacWhirr. It is what Jim does on 
board the "Patna" and again in Doramin's campong in 
Patusan that puts the seal on our knowledge of what his 
soul is like. It is when Nostromo represses the true 
story of the treasure and afterwards grows rich slowly 
that the irony of his self-confident vanity unfolds. It is 
Dona Rita's visit to Monsieur George's room in his ab- 



54 JOSEPH CONRAD 

sence that reveals without disguise her love for him thatitl 
we had half doubted till then. It is Lena's supreme actjs 
that is her victory over Heyst's contemptuous negationj 
of life. It is as Almayer blots out forever Nina's foot-i 
steps in the sand that our hearts .are wrung with "the 
anguish of paternity." It is the "horribly merry" glance 
of Flora de Barral on that rainy morning when the odious 
personage came to drag her back to his impossible house-: 
hold which throws sudden light on her mental state: 
The tragedy of Emilia Gould cannot be expressed in act; 
therein lies her wretchedness. There is nothing that she 
can do. She has no silver mine to look after. We must 
learn of her unhappiness in one of the rare moments 
when she admits us into the hidden reserve of hei 
thoughts. 

. Sometimes Conrad pauses in the story to gather to 
^efher himself all these traits of a character that we have 
been watching unfold before us. But he prefers tq 
postpone such a summary until we are well acquainted 
with the men and women themselves, just as in real lif0 
we may stop at some moment to marshal before us all 
the known facts in order to comprehend what some one 
may do next. The revelation of Mrs. Gould, for instance 
though it occurs a hundred pages from the end of the 
long book, is really at the climax of the story. For he 
there is nothing more to be said. She must put on i 
brave front and face the rest of her life in unspeakinj 
endurance. The long analysis of Nostromo's character 
comes at that crisis in his life when he himself pauses 
to review his past success in order to plan his course in 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 55 

he future, — at the moment when he wakes after his safe 
wim back to the harbor from the Great Isabel. 

But this use of Romantic block summary is rare. 
Zonrad prefers, as we have said, the dramatic method of 
iirect speech and action. Interwoven with this is a 
)ainstaking, though apparently casual, rendering of ges- 
ure, pose and facial expression so indicative of mood, 
)f personality, and of race. The most vivid instances 
;hat come to mind are in Lord Jim of the French lieu- 
enant, Stein, old Egstrom, and of Jim himself. In that 
^tudy of physiological reactions on which the Realists 
3ride themselves, Conrad shows himself a master. In 
Chance, Under Western Eyes, The Secret Agent, he has 
:aken particular pains to stress this physiological side of 
Realism. The most elaborate of the descriptions of this 
>ort is the terrible analysis of Winnie Verloc just before 
a^id just after she murders her husband. 
\. So real are the people of Conrad's imagination that 
there is not one of them whom we do not feel that he 
must at some time in his life have met. Conrad tells us 
himself that Almayer and Lord Jim were actual men of 
whom he had caught a glimpse, with whom he had talked. 
When we read in A Personal Record his descriptions of 
persons whom he knew, we begin to understand his amaz- 
ing ability to create in fiction Hving beings, for in this 
book he has revealed to us the keenness of his observation 
and the graphic power of his memory. This is his de- 
scription of the real Almayer, written down twenty-five 
or more years after Conrad saw him, and recollected 
from memory only, for Conrad says that he never made 



56 JOSEPH CONRAD 

a note of a fact, of an impression, of an anecdote in hi 
life. 

•'! had seen him for the first time, some four years 

?f/i?7' V.T ^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^ ^ steamer, moored to a 
rickety little wharf forty miles up, more or less, a 
Bornean river . The forests above and below and 
on the opposite bank looked black and dank- wet 
dripped from the rigging upon the tightly stretched 
deck awnings, and it was in the middle of a shudder- 
ing yawn that I caught sight of Almayer. He was 
nioving across a patch of burned grass, in a blurred 
shadowy shape with the blurred bulk of a house be- 
hind him, a low house of mats, bamboos, and palm- 
leaves, with a high pitched roof of grass. 

"He stepped upon the jetty. He was clad simply 
m flapping pajamas of cretonne pattern (enormous 
flowers with yellow petals on a disagreeable blue 
ground) and a thin cotton singlet with short sleeves 
His arms, bare to the elbow, were crossed on his 
chest. His black hair looked as if it had not been 
cut for a very long time, and a curly wisp of it 
strayed across his forehead . . . 

"He came quite close to the ship's side and raised 
a harrassed countenance, round and flat, with that 
curl of black hair over the forehead and a heavy 
pained glance." 

This is a real person to whom through his magic comJ 
mand over words he is introducing the reader. In his' 
fictitious characters we find this same actuality of descrip^ 
tion, based, we feel confident, on personal acquaintance 
interpreted through recollective imagination. Here is one 
other description which is peculiarly Conradian, the "joll}; 
skipper of the Patna" as Jim sees him on that fatal night. 

"His skipper had come up noiselessly, in pyjamas 
and with his sleeping-jacket flung wide open. Red of 
face, only half awake, the left eye partlv closed, the 
right staring stupid and glassy, he hung his big head 
over the chart and scratched his ribs sleepily. There 
was something obscene in the sight of his naked 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 57 

flesh. His bared breast glistened soft and greasy, as 
though he had sweated fat in his sleep. He pro- 
nounced a professional remark in a voice harsh and 
dead, resembling the rasping sound of a wood-file on 
the edge of a plank; the fold of his double chin hung 
like a bag triced up close under the hinge of his jaw. 
Jim started, and his answer was full of deference; 
but the odious and fleshy figure, as though seen for 
the first time in a revealing moment, fixed itself m 
his memory for ever as the incarnation of everything 
vile and base that lurks in the world we love: in our 
hearts we trust for salvation, in the men that sur- 
round us, in the sights that fill our eyes, in the sounds 
that fill our ears, and in the air that fills our lungs." 

In that brief paragraph we have the epitome of 
Zonrad's art :— ReaHstic photographic detail side by side 
vith the Romantic interpretation of the meaning of things 
md the yearning for beauty. 



PART III 



Romantic-Realism in Conrad's Use of Setting 

^ I ''HE object of the universe, he would fondly believe! 

-■- is purely spectacular, Conrad writes in A Personal 

Record. He said the same thing earlier in the Preface t4 

The Nigger of the Narcissus: 

"To arrest, for the space of a breath, the hands 
busy about the work of the earth, and compel men 
entranced by the sight of distant goals to glance for 
a moment at the surrounding vision of form and 
color, of sunshine and shadows; to make them pause 
for a look, a sigh, for a smile — such is the aim, diffi- 
cult and evanescent, and reserved only for a very 
few to achieve. But, sometimes, by the deserving 
and the fortunate, even that task is accomplished. 
And when it is accomplished — behold! — all the truth 
of life is there: a moment of vision, a sigh, a smile — 
and the return to an eternal rest." 

This is war a I'outrance on Stevenson's slogan, "Deat| 
to the optic nerve." In a letter of a date ten years previ 
ous to the letter to Henry James, in which he expounded 
this article of his faith, Stevenson had written more fuU)^ 

"The painter must study more from nature than the 
man of words. But why? Because literature deals 
with men's business and passions, which in the game 
of life, we are irresistibly obliged to study; but 
painting with relations of light, and color, and signifi- 
cances, and form, which from the immemorial habit 
of the race, we pass over with unregarded eye." 

58 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 59 

The chief aim of the noveUst, in Conrad's opinion, is 
) make men see these very aspects of life with pene- 
•ating and imaginative vision. The intermingHng of 
ght and darkness becomes to him the allegory of the 
nown and the unknown in human existence. It is his 
urpose to make men perceive the sharp reality of the 
irongly illuminated places, crude and ugly though they 
lay be, and to uplift them by a sense of the mystery 
f vistas obscured in the half-lights and shadows, or 
eiled in a mist of beauty and romance. To behold both 
. to have full vision, to know all the truth of life. 

To see Hfe "in its forms, in its colors, in its lights, in 
s shadows" is to comprehend one of the great words 
f all time : Beauty. 

"I, who have never sought in the written word 
anything else but a form of the Beautiful — I have 
carried over that article of creed from the decks of 
ships to the more circumscribed space of my desk, 
and by that act, I suppose, I have become perma- 
nently imperfect in the eyes of the ineffable company 
of esthetes." 

Beauty is the symbol to Conrad of "That which is to 
e contemplated to all Infinity." Through it men 
.pproach to understanding of the divine. Little wonder 
t is then that Conrad's books are flooded with descrip- 
ions of color, of light, of shadow, of sound, of persons 
.nd of places, of the land, of the sea, and of the sky. 
t is as a master of description that his power has been 
nost unreservedly proclaimed. ^There could be no more .-> . 1 
lelightful task than selecting beautiful and representative 
lescriptive passages from his novels and his tales."^ The 
lifhculty lies in the wealth of choice. 



6o JOSEPH CONRAD 

As a writer of the sea he stands supreme: — the sc 
in serene weather, in dead calm, in tempest and in win( 
He makes us know the cold, the heat, the color, the light 
of the sea; night and the stars, dawn and the clouds au 
there; the space and the majesty of the sea, its lonelinesi 
and its unfathomable mystery are there. We perceive 
always through the eyes of the men whom it tosses to arii 
fro as midgets in its power, but whose indomitable huma' 
spirit it cannot crush. 

This ever-varying sea is the back-drop against whic' 
move the characters in all of his books ; yet some storie 
he has chosen to be an expression of a sole aspect c 
the sea. Typhoon and The Nigger of the Narcissus ai 
among the most tremendously real as well as poetic d^ 
scriptions of tempest and gale in prose fiction. Tfii 
Shadow Line is the sea in an unearthly calm, a Rime c 
the Ancient Mariner in prose, weird and beautiful, art 
dreadfully realistic. Youth is a lyric of youth and tfc 
sea; The End of the Tether of the pathos of old age o 
the sea. Conrad's pictures are more memorable than thi 
events or even the characters themselves in many of thegi 
sea stories. They should be read in their entirety, fc 
they are woven into the fabric of the plot. 

Boisterous winds and sweeping gales, clear weathej 
shrouding fog and stifling heat, sunset, moonrise, and till 
blinding glare of noon fill the pages of Conrad with th' 
vivid pictorial illusion of great marine paintings. HI; 
is the art of the etcher, too. The description of thI 
Thames in Heart of Darkness, The Nigger of tk 
Narcissus, The Secret Agent; of the harbors in the latte] 
and in Lord Jim of London streets at night and in t 






HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 6i 

ay light of fog,— might serve as descriptions of 
histler's etchings. 

These pictures are not flat canvasses. Conrad's skill 
I the art of language makes real the heat, the cold, the 
und, the motion, the silence, the space of life itself. 
As remarkable as his sea pictures are those of the 
opics and the jungle in Almayer's Folly, An Outcast 
, the Islands, Heart of Darkness, Youth, Victory, The 
escue. They are painted from actual experience by an 
tist of whom might be said the words he wrote of one 
:• his own characters, "It seems that he had not only a 
emory but that he also knew how to remember." Sir 
lUgh CUfford, who had been Governor of the Federated 
^alay States and had himself written several books about 
;e Malay, declares that Conrad's "absolute creation" 
I the atmosphere of southern Asia is well-nigh perfect, 
ivery critic of Conrad lays strong emphasis on this ro- 
mantic— and realistic— picturing of strange, exotic coun- 
ties. In fact, it moves one Mr. Curran to remark that 
lese scenes of Conrad "beget in us a longing to visit 
ach quaint corners of the earth!" This same reviewer 
)unds a warning for parents in regard to the Malay 
lie Almayer's Folly. "This girl Nina, and her Malay 
)ver," says Mr. Curran, "supply all the amorous and 
pmantic portions of the story; and, perhaps, it is better 
p say in passing that one of these scenes may be thought 
y some parents too ardent for young persons to read." 
, (It is this same gentle critic, by the way, who is 
lorrified by the corruption spread throughout the South 
imerican republic in Nostromo. "The blooming forth 
if that hardy annual Revolution," he says, "is delightfully 



62 JOSEPH CONRAD 

done, and one cannot rise from the story without feeUnj 
a strong desire to punch the heads df some of its actoni 
If what the author writes be true, a few good missioni 
would not do CathoHcity much harm in the regions soutli 
of the United States." There is a- naive tribute til 
Conrad's reaHsm!) i 

In Almayer's Folly, in Heart of Darkness, in Youth 
the exotic beauty and the rankness of the primeval jungle' 
the insidious torpor of the tropics, their luxuriance ano 
their decay, are intertwined with every thread of the 
story, every incident of the plot, and every thought an( 
deed of the characters. Single passages can only sugges: 
the subtle design. It is like fraying out a little threaa 
of an intricately-patterned web to test the color effect o: 
the whole. A few sentences can indicate instantly th<i 
demoralizing influence of the land, as in this short paraj 
graph from Heart of Darkness : 

"We called at some places with farcical names, 
where the merry dance of death and trade goes on in 
a still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated 
catacomb; all along the formless coast bordered by 
dangerous surf, as if Nature herself had tried to ward 
off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of death 
in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose 
waters thickened into slime, invaded the contorted 
mangroves, that seem to writhe at us in the extremity 
of an impotent despair. Nowhere did we stop long 
enough to get a particularized impression, but the 
general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew 
upon me. It v/as like a weary pilgrimage amongst 
hints for nightmare." 

When the action rises to passion, this tropical ex-q 
uberance becomes the fit setting for the flaming ruthlessTJ 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 63 

»ss of love, as in the picture of the forest river on 
hich Dain Maroola met Nina in the early dawn. 

It is in his use of setting that Conrad's Romantic- 
ealism is at once apparent. The all pervading atmosphere 

never for the sake of effect alone; it is another of his 
)mantic methods of foreshadowing events and of 
^mbolizing personalities. But this romantic use of 
ackground is inextricably associated with his realistic 
udy of the effect of environment on men and women. 
1 Heart of Darkness, for example, the unmerciful glare 
the African sun, the impenetrable blackness of the 
mgle, the dank smell of decayed vegetation, the mysteri- 
us lure of the impassivity of nature, become first the 
lenace of the land, and then the spell that draws men to 
its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and 
rutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous 
assions." Through every description runs this alle- 
orical undertone^ The sordidness and desolation of the 
2ttlement, and the tangled fecundity of the tropical for- 
sts are at once the symbol and the instrument of 
i-lmayer's shuffling incompetence and his hopeless 
ragedy. The sombre tragedy of The Secret Agent can 
e enacted only under a grimy sky, in the dirt of London 
treets, among the "inhospitable accumulations of bricks, 
lates and stones — things in themselves unlovely and un- 
riendly to man," where the perpetual fog and rain and 
lud steep every beautiful thing in their own sodden 
tmosphere. "And the lofty pretensions of a mankind 
ppressed by the miserable indignities of the weather 
ppeared as a colossal and hopeless vanity deserving of 
corn, wonder and compassion." At one point in this 



64 JOSEPH CONRAD 

book the weather is definitely accessory to the action,' 
Had not the boat-train been practically empty on account) 
of the time of the year and the abominable weather; 
Winnie Verloc might have been noticed by a fellow' 
passenger, might have been questioned, or might have' 
found some understanding soul to unburden herself to,* 
and her fate might have been less tragic. ' 

The general harmony between the setting and the' 
sinister nature of the plot in this novel becomes in places' 
manifestly suggestive of what is to come. This is a] 
matter of style, to be sure. When Winnie Verloc plunges 
into the street in search of help, we read, 

"She floundered over the doorstep head forward, 
arms thrown out, like a person falling over the para- 
pet of a bridge. This entrance into the open air had 
a foretaste of drowning; a shiny dampness enveloped 
her, entered her nostrils, clung to her hair." 

Every phrase in the passage connotes her future fate. 

Likewise in Lord Jim choice of words can make us; 
prescient of the future, as we read of the voyage of th© 
"Patna" over the burning, still Arabian sea, "Viscous,; 
stagnant, dead." She passes on "with a slight hiss,' 
"smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if scorched^ 
by a flame flicked at her from heaven without pity." 

In Nostromo the careful description in the Prelude ofl 
the mountains, the coastline, the harbor, and the city,- 
sky, land and sea, the sinister veil of overh'anging cloud, 
close in ominously the action of the whole story until, 
ironically, on human anguish "the moonlight in the offingj 
closed as if with a colossal bar of silver the entrance ofj 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 65 

he Placid Gulf — the sombre cavern of clouds and still- 
less in the surf-fretted seaboard." 

In The Arrow of Gold, in striking contrast to the 
xuberant descriptions of the earlier books, there are only 
hree descriptions of nature, all of them of the briefest, 
lardly more than five or six lines long; yet in this novel, 
00, we realize that the weather is symbolic. This one 
idventurous year of Monsieur George's life opens and 
loses on the cold blasts of the mistral that leave him 
hivering and desolate. 

In his last novel The Rescue Conrad has returned to 
lis earlier romantic method of evoking through the magic 
f his style that tropical setting which shapes the destinies 
f the beings caged within its enchanted bounds. Edith 
Fravers expresses the symbolism of the background of 
he story as she looks across the lagoon at the edge of 
he forest. 

"That great ereetion of enormous solid trunks, 
dark, rugged columns festooned with writhing creep- 
ers and steeped in gloom, was so close to the bank 
that by looking over the side of the ship she could 
see inverted in the glassy belt of water its massive 
and black reflection on the reflected sky that gave the 
impression of a clear blue abyss seen through a trans- 
parent film. And when she raised her eyes the same 
abysmal immobility seemed to reign over the whole 
sun-bathed enlargement of that lagoon which was one 
of the secret places of the earth. She felt strongly 
her isolation. She was so much the only being of her 
kind moving within this mystery that even to herself 
she looked like an apparation without rights and with- 
out defense and that must end by surrendering to 
those forces which seemed to her but the unconscious 
genius of the place. Hers was the most complete 
loneliness charged with a catastrophic tension. It lay 
about her as though she had been set apart within a 
magic circle. It cut off — but it did not protect." 



66 JOSEPH CONRAD 

Lingard's happiness, like the dazzling color and flaminji 
light of the islands and seas of the Shore of Refuge, ii 
swallowed up in an intense black pall that closes in oij 
the world in such a silence that "one might have fancier 
oneself come to the end of time." I 

The greatest achievement of all these studies in back! 
ground is Nostromo. The book leaves us with ai| 
ineradicable impression of having actually lived in Sulacc 
With Emilia Gould we have traveled through the ravines 
and across the plains of Costaguana, over the long, dustjj 
hot roads at the foot of the snow-covered Sierra, past thd 
pueblos and the estates, the smooth-walled haciendas, till 
we turned from the broad Campo to Sulaco itself lyinji 
in the curve of the hushed Placid Gulf. We have drivej 
past the harbor with its wooden jetties and moored ship^i 
through the slums to the custom-house and the new irom 
roofed railway station, down the Alameda, dotted witt 
family coaches of the "best families" of Sulaco, over t(i 
the market-place where in the morning the peasanj 
women spread their umbrellas over fruit and flow© 
stands, and in the evening cooked their meals over thi 
red coals of the brazeros glowing in the dark, pasj 
churches and cathedral, past shops and cafes, to th| 
shuttered houses of the residence section where we tasti 
"the worn-out antiquity of the old town, so characteristiif 
with its stuccoed houses and barred windows, with th(^ 
great yellowy- white walls of abandoned convents behinjj 
the rows of sombre green cypresses." As "the bells o!| 
the city were striking the hour of Oracion," the carriag 
has rolled under the old gateway of the Casa Gould, an( 
like Decoud we turn to contemplate the inner aspect o 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 67 

tie gate. No wonder, we think, that Mrs. Gould loved 
le patio of her Spanish house as we watch her standing 
elow the painting of the blue- robed Madonna with the 
rowned child in her arms, looking down through the 
iaves and flowers of the rows of shading plants between 
tie arches on the high balustrade to the paved quadrangle 
elow where slender bamboo stems drooped over the 
istern, and the busy life of the Spanish household went 
3 and fro in sunlight and shadow beneath her quiet gaze. 
Joth the countryside and the city teem with life. Aris- 
Dcrats, caballeros, officers, merchants, cargadores, peas- 
nts, laborers, beggars, burdened Indians, Italians and 
)ccidentals, and picturesque Spaniards, incorrigible in 
beir light-heartedness and in their brutality, dancing one 
lay, rioting the next, fighting tumultuously in violent 
evolution, placid and passionate by turns, — all throng 
iast us and around us like a spectacle of life itself. In 
vhsit other novel is a whole country so convincingly 
reated ! 

The descriptions in Conrad, however poetic they may 
le, always keep touch with reality through some minute- 
less of detail in sharp contrast with the previous pictur- 
squeness of the scene, or through alternate successions 
•f Romantic and Realistic methods. For example, the 
erenity of the sunset glow, reflected down the middle of 
he main thoroughfare of the Eastern port, falls on the 
Drilliant costumes and brown and yellow faces of the 
urbaned Indian crowd and on the gay parasols in the 
low-moving procession of European carriages, touches 
vith rosy light the dark-blue curve of the quiet bay, and 
lames fiercely on a prosaic tightly-packed street car 



68 JOSEPH CONRAD j 

which "in a red haze of dust navigated cautiously up tl: ' 
human stream with the incessant blare of its horn, in tlif 
manner of a steamer groping in a fog." i:i 

As in life, sublime and commonplace mingle. WiP 
the smouldering hull of their fire-gutted ship cracklir| 
and roaring beneath them, the crew of the ''J^dea" calml: 
sit down to an improvised meal of bread and cheese an 
bottled stout while the blazing sheet of fire shoots tongue 
of flame behind and above them. In the silence of ttJ 
sleeping camp on the moonlit plateau high among tl:' 
peaks of the Sierra where the white Higuerota "soare 
out of the shadows of rock and earth like a frozen bubb^ 
under the moon," a pack-mule stamped his forefoj 
and blew heavily twice. As the furious gale buffets tr| 
huddled crew of the "Narcissus," 

**a fierce squall seemed to burst asunder the thick 
mass of sooty vapours; and above the wrack of torn 
clouds glimpses could be caught of the high moon 
rushing backwards with frightful speed over the sky, 
right in the wind's eye. Many hung their heads, 
muttering that it 'turned their inwards out' to look at 
it. Soon the clouds closed up, and the world again 
became a raging, blind darkness that howled, flinging 
at the lonely ship salt sprays and sleet." 

The sudden impact of the contrast brings you up wit 
a shock as in this description of the inspired cook of th 
"Narcissus," when after being carried away on the floo 
of his religious fervor, we see him through James Wait 
eyes. 

"The cook's lips moved inaudibly; his face was 
rapt, his eyes turned up. He seemed to be mentally 
imploring deck beams, the brass hook of the lamp, i 
two cockroaches." ! 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 69 

iSometimes the glamour fades entirely and only the 
jrdid remains, as in the description of Schomberg's 
ualid and hot hotel, or of the filthy tenement inn that 
irbored the teeming misery of Russia's slums where fate 
^yed a trumpcard in Razumov's deistiny, or in the photo- 
japhic detail of Verloc's shabby shop. 
It may be objected that these examples of Realistic 
itail are all of unpleasant things. But it is for the un- 
^asant that Conrad reserves this method; the beautiful 
'e depicted with the color and suggestiveness of Roman- 
^ism, with the mystery, that "fascination of the incom- 
rehensible" for which all men yearn and which the 
mple minds of the big children of the sea find in the 
iges of undiluted, romantic novels of adventure, that 
if them by the 

"enigmatical disclosure of a resplendent world that 
exists with the frontier of infamy and filth, within 
that border of dirt and hunger, of misery and dissipa- 
tion, that comes down on all sides to the water's edge 
of the incorruptible ocean, and is the only thing they 
know of life, the only thing they see of land, — those 
life-long prisoners of the sea. Mystery!" 

his is that romance which Marlow heard in the low 
Dice of Kurtz' beloved, which seemed 

"to have the accompaniment of all other sounds, 
full of mystery, desolation, and sorrow, I had ever 
heard — the ripple of the river, the soughing of the 
trees swayed by the wind, the murmurs of wild 
crowds, the faint ring of incomprehensible words 
cried from afar, the whisper of a voice speaking from 
beyond the threshold of an eternal darkness." 

.0 is Romance the core of Reality. 
Among the romantic qualities of Conrad is his love 
f color. His descriptions are as colorful as the poems 



70 JOSEPH CONRAD 

of Rossetti and Keats or as luminous as Shelley's, and th 
language as poetical. Red, blue, gold, silver, blackl 
purple, gleam in all the pictures like pure color on 
painter's canvas. He loves the glow of sunset over lan( 
and sea when "tints of purple, gold and crimson" an 
"mirrored in the clear water of the harbor," and thi 
waves toss red sparks on the sandy beaches, whei; 
mountain and island and coastline lengthen* in softenec 
outlines, purple-black, against the flaming magnificence o:< 
the sky. He paints the brilliant blue of the sea, sparkling 
in sunshine, the gold and silver of the rising moon anc 
veiling clouds, and the moon's path on the flowing blacV 
waves. He has Corot's fondness for a point of red ir 
the picture, whether it be the red of dress or hood, the 
crimson of a scarf, the bronze gleams of a woman's hairi 
the glow of a fire burning in the darkness, the glory of c 
flaming sunset reflected on cloud or on the sails of ships- 
or the flaming red of the British ensign. 

But an attentive reader of Conrad cannot fail tC( 
observe that he paints the greater number of his scenes 
in chiaroscuro. The brilliance of unshaded sunlight 
gives way to the softer splendor of one focus of 
light, narrowed in by masses of obscuring blacks! 
and browns. We find vast shadows, dark laid oml 
dark, out of which dim shapes emerge in grayishi' 
gloom, or stand out clearly modeled in sharp gleams^ 
of yellow and red light : — flame in the night ; shafts' 
of sunlight across a darkened room or the glow of' 
a torch in a dim street; lamp or candlelight illuminating' 
a shadowed face or room or ship's deck in the night; 
sunset splendor fading to enveloping dusk; the jewelled 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 71 

)ints of the lights of a city along a black horizon line; 

ear patches of sun in the surrounding sombreness of 

irk forest ; indistinct figures silhouetted in the moonlight 

the transparent semi-darkness of a starry night; 

azzling light in a cloudy sky ;. white-crested waves in 

le solid blackness of an inky sea. There are long 

lUeries of such pictures as these. To take only one 

^cample, there is pure poetry in the description of night 

a the "Narcissus," nights on which Donkin prowled, 

piteful and plotting evil. 

"On clear evenings, the silent ship, under the cold 
sheen of the dead moon, took on the false aspect of 
passionless repose resembling the winter of the earth. 
Under her a long band of gold barred the black disc 
of the sea. Footsteps echoed on her quiet decks. 
The moonlight clung to her like a frosted mist and 
the white sails stood out in dazzling cones as of stain- 
less snow. In the magnificence of the phantom rays, 
the ship appeared pure like a vision of ideal beauty, 
illusive like a tender dream of serene peace. And 
nothing in her was real, nothing was distinct and 
solid but the heavy shadows that filled her decks 
with their unceasing and noiseless stir; the shadows 
blacker than the night and more restless than the 
thoughts of men." 

This play of light on shadow is more than mere pic- 
aresque ornament to the story. . Underlying it is the 
Jlegory which makes of it a column in the structure of 
he plot. At times this allegory is implied; but its inner 
ignificance Conrad has consciously made clear more than 
tnce. We should understand that in Heart of Darkness 
he contrast of light and darkness symbolizes the theme 
)f the story even if Marlow had not taken the trouble to 
•.xplain in his tone, half grim, half jesting, that he 
vas sent as "something like an emissary of light" into 



72, JOSEPH CONRAD 

the land that seemed to beckon with "a treacherous appea 
to the lurking death, to the hidden evil, to the profounct 
darkness of its heart." Not alone the sinister gleam oil 
the silver clouds above the impenetrable obscurity of the 
Golfo Placido carries an allegorical meaning; we under- 
stand the sadder human effort of Emilia Gould tc 
withstand the encroaching darkness of material interests 
in such an apparently unportentous sentence as this; 
"Only the sala of the Casa Gould flung out defiantly the 
blaze of its four windows, the bright appeal of light im 
the whole dumb obscurity of the street." 

As Almayer watches the yellow triangle of the praui 
shine brilliantly on the blue of the open sea till it vanishes 
in the shadow of the headline, we know with him, unmis- 
takably, that it is the disappearing emblem of his own 
happiness. The yellow gleam of the riding-light in the 
fore-rigging burns as a symbolic flame to guide the Secret 
Sharer to that ship where accident and fate have awaiting 
him the one narrow ray of light out of his darkness, — the 
man who will understand and help him. In Under 
Western Eyes the snow-covered land of Russia stretching 
vast and white into the obscurity of surrounding night is 
"like a monstrous blank page awaiting the record of an 
inconceivable history." To it Razumov likens his own 
cold, blank existence. What irony lies in the focus ofi 
light on Mrs. Verloc's wedding ring after she has justi 
learned the truth of Ste^vie's death, or on the flash of i 
jewels and gold of the many rings on Mrs. Gould's white 
hands as she drops them wearily into her lap! 

Life, Conrad says, is altogether "the brilliance of sun- 
shine together with the unfathomable splendor of the 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 73 

ght." l^here had been no path in his Ufe until he knew 
3ve for Rita, says Monsieur George in The Arrow of 
^old. At the end of Heart of Darkness Marlow had 
aid the same thing. 

Love and faith alone illumine the impenetrable 
bscurity of human existence. They shine radiantly in 
he surrounding darkness. Will they eternally endure? 
That, too, is inscrutable, says Conrad. To the eyes of 
nen it would seem that even they can grow dim and fade 
iway. "But not for long!"* 



* "The Arrow of Gold," page 138. 



PART IV 



The Spirit of Conrad 

THE fusion of light and darkness embodies Conrad's 
attitude toward life. In fact, more than once, he^ 
puts this parable of life into the mouth of Marlow. Not! 
only in Heart of Darkness but also in Lord Jim, Marlow 
uses the figure repeatedly. He reads into the obscuring 
physical shadows and lights that surround Jim an inter- 
pretation of the inexplicable that perpetually crosses the 
light of our understanding of human character and off 
existence itself. "If there were no dark places, no sha- 
dows, no half-lights, would men's dim comprehension be 
illumined in the full radiance that would reveal all?" 
Conrad seems to question. "But light," he answers,, 
"comes in flashes only, and in flashes only is revelation i 
made clear." This is the dominant strain in Conrad: am 
abiding realization of the mystery that shrouds life. He 
does not solve the mystery. He presents it as it is. All 
we can look for are the gleams of understanding that will 
irradiate the dimness. 

Because Conrad never sentimentalizes over the in- 
scrutability of life, because he presents it with clear-eyed 
comprehension of what it involves, he has been accused 
by his reviewers of being both pessimist and cynic. 
There is Mr. Mencken, for instance, whose admiration of 

74 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 75 

Conrad is based on what he considers an obvious simi- 
irity of temperament. He makes Conrad out to have 
he same misogynic and disillusioned attitude toward Ufe 
which he has himself attained, and savagely commends 
lis pessimism. 

"In the midst of futile meliorism, which deceives 
the more it soothes, he (Conrad) stands out like some 
sinister skeleton at the feast, regarding the festivities 
with a flickering and impenetrable grin." 

Vrthur Symons is equally convinced of Conrad's *'sullen 
ubjective vision." ''Conrad's inexpUcable mind," he says, 

"has created for itself a secret world to live in, 
some corner stealthily hidden away from view, among 
impenetrable forests, on the banks of untravelled 
rivers. From that corner, like a spider in his web, he 
throws out tentacles into the darkness; he gathers 
in his spoils, he collects them like a miser, stripping 
from them their dreams and visions to decorate his 
web magnificently . . . Beyond and below this 
obscure realm, beyond and below human nature 
itself, Conrad is seen through the veil of the persons 
of his drama, living a hidden, exasperated life." 

Such statements (and there are other critics who 
iccuse him of this bitter cynicism), would lead the reader 
to beUeve that Conrad is nothing but a grim Realist, 
laying bare the inconsistencies, faults, and vices of man- 
kind with an exultant flash of his dissecting knife as he 
uncovers each putrid spot. But it is at this point of 
union with the Realistic school that Conrad steps aside 
into his own personality. He himself has asserted that 
all art is revealed through the personality of the artist 
himself. 

"I know that a novelist lives in his work. He 
Stands there, the only reality in an invented world, 



76 JOSEPH CONRAD 

among imaginary things, happenings, and people. 
Writing about them, he is only writing about himself. 
But the disclosure is not complete. He remains, to 
a certain extent, a figure behind the veil; a suspected, 
rather than a seen presence — a movement and a voice 
behind the draperies of fiction."* 

Conrad's personality, as he reveals it in his books, isj 
not that of the disillusioned materialist. His stories, tol 
be sure, lack that exuberance of sheer glory in living that 
emanates from the hearty spirit of the Romancer. 
His books are never joyous; they leave you always 
thoughtful, sometimes even depressed. His is the 
humor of the serious man. We never find him 
joining in the merriment, and creating it for others. 
He stands aside as the observer. His eyes smile, 
but he seldom laughs outright. The only unreflectively 
funny incident in any of his books is the landing of 
Almayer's pony in A Personal Record; but that passage 
alone is sufficient to refute the assertion that Conrad has 
no humor. It is a delicious fragment of pure comedy, — 
and full of sympathy with the pony. But this is the 
only instance of open drollery in Conrad. The Duel, to 
be sure, is a comedy tale, but it is fantastic and whimsical 
rather than broadly funny. His humor is of a kind more 
subtle than good-natured jollity. In the perception of 
inexplicable and omnipresent incongruities Conrad sees 
manifested the all-enveloping mystery of life. 

You may explain a man's character by the careful 
analysis of his racial heredity and of his physical and 
social environment. You may see that he reacts accord- 
ingly to understood psychological laws. Conrad does this 

♦ "A Personal Record," page 4, 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 17 

in every one of his stories, as I have endeavored to 
show. Almayer, Kurtz, Razumov, Heyst, Charles Gould, 
Decoud, Singleton, Donkin— many others— are all formed 
out of tendencies inherited from their social ancestry 
and shaped by the forces of their surroundings. Conrad 
omits no word nor deed nor bit of description which shall 
make this explicit. Yet character evolution is not so 
mechanistic as this; it would be too much like putting 
men and women into the glass jars of a biological labora- 
tory, labeled as specimens. To such precise scientific 
reconstruction of human character, there is a power in 
destiny, which (to paraphrase) declares: ''Hitherto shah 
thou come, but no further ; and here shall thy proud laws 
be stayed." We perceive, like Marlow, "how incompre- 
hensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share 
with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun." 
It is this mysterious element in character and in life in 
which Conrad is absorbed. 

It manifests itself, first of all, in the incalculable. 
Things turn out so contrary to all expectation. Jim and 
the officers of the "Patna" had every reason to beheve 
that the rotten bulkhead would give way any instant; 
but it held out after all. Almayer thought that he was 
furthering his plans for a happy future with Nina when 
he took Dain Maroola as his confederate ; but Nina loved 
the Malay chief, and Almayer fell in with bitter anguish. 
Verloc supposed that Steevie would be an innocent, un- 
scathed tool to his careful plot; but Steevie stumbled. 
Ned and Charley congratulated themselves that at last 
the dire spell of the Brute, The Apse Family, was broken; 
and in the very moment of their exultation the most 



78 JOSEPH CONRAD 

unlooked-for kind of dreadful accident happened. Emiliji 
Gould joined enthusiastically in her husband's plans t(^ 
use the San Tome mine as a means to rehabilitate Sulaco 
and Charles Gould proved its slave, and her happines: 
was ruined. 

These unexpected turns of fate are the tragic iron) 

of human existence. Destiny lies hid to play her wantor 

tricks in ordering the affairs of men. Chance is he£ 

handmaid. De Barral might just as well have engagec 

a perfectly harmless usual specimen of governess for his 

daughter, but "chance being incalculable" he fell upor 

that vulgar-minded woman who nearly ruined Flora's life 

It was chance that brought Flora and Captain Anthony 

together. It was the supreme chance that young Powell' 

stooped to pick up a coil of rope left lying on the deck; 

by some one's carelessness, and so brought his head down 

to the level of the after skylight at the moment when that 

fatal, senile hand was thrust between the curtains of the 

Captain's cabin. It was chance that left the rope ladder 

hanging over the side of the ship in The Secret Sharer: 

It was chance— or fatality— that led Heyst to Schom-i 

berg's hotel at Bangkok on the night when Zangiacomo's 

Ladies' Orchestra was established there. It was chance 

— or fatality — that Ziemianitch should have been steeped 

in a sodden, drunken sleep so that Razumov could not 

wake him even by a brutal beating. Examples are too 

many to enumerate at length. Things happen by chance. 

It may have been the strange chances in his own career 

that led Conrad to perceive with lucidity the manifest 

part that accident plays in life. The most tremendous 

phenomenon of all the obscure, hidden forces at work 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 79 

a his own life, he says, was the writing of the first page 

)f Almayer's Folly. 

"From the moment I had, in the simplicity of my 
heart and the amazing ignorance of my mind, written 
that page, the die was cast. Never had Rubicon been 
more blindly forded, without invocation to the gods, 
without fear of men." 

Moreover, he asserts if he had not got to know Almayer 
Dretty well, it is almost certain there would never have 
)een a line of his in print. Thus a chance meeting with 
in unknown foreigner in a remote Malay setdement on 
:he East Coast turned Conrad from Master Mariner to 
Master Writer. 

\ Such happenings as these are outside the control or the 
planning of the men and women whose destinies they 
shape. Stranger still are the unaccountable acts of men. 
A man never knows himself when he thinks about him- 
self ; his deeds are his measure. And fate is sure to put) 
him to that test which will knock his self-assurance toj 
atoms. Jim was romantically certain beforehand of his 
shining courage in face of emergency. Taken unawares, 
he did the prepesterously inconceivable thing. The fugi- 
tive in The Secret Sharer had found out suddenly that 
there lurked in his nature incredible impulses that brought 
'forth uncalculated action. Falk's abhorrence of himself 
afterwards could not wipe out for him the fact that he 
had once eaten human flesh. In the face of temptation 
Nostromo's incorruptible fidelity crumbled to dusty ashes. 
Until Haldin startled him in his rooms that winter day, 
Razumov had not dreamed himself capable of acting a 
Brutus' part. 

It is Razumov, in fact, who is the most mystically im- 



8o JOSEPH CONRAD 

pressed with the strangeness of life : the secret places, tl: 
secret influences over a man's thoughts, the surprises < 
life, astonishing impulses, mysterious motives of conduo 
"A man's most open actions have a secret side to then 
That is interesting and so unfathomable!" he contenc 
to Haldin. Conrad says of himself that he could no 
explain his own determined resolve to become an Englis 
seaman. He could not understand the mysteriousness o 
his own impulses. 

"I understood no more than the people who called 
upon me to explain myself. There was no precedent. 
I verily believe mine was the only case of a boy of 
my nationality and antecedents taking a, so to speak, 
standing jump out of his racial surroundings and 
associations." 

' Another of the incomprehensible aspects of life ti 
I which Conrad draws our attention is the disparity be 
j tween men's deserts and their destinies. Five times ou 
' of ten poetic justice is an ideal of the sentimentalist rathe 
than the experience in reality, he affirms. It is th 
women and the simple-hearted who suffer most^unfairll 
in Conrad's books. Emilia Gould, Antonia Avellanoe 
Linda Viola, Natalie Haldin suffer beyond anything the;, 
have merited. We leave them to sorrow who have de 
served great joy. Harmless, half-witted Steevie, the for 
lorn outcast whom Amy Foster married, and Flora d< 
Barral, even Dona Rita, are victims of circumstance 
The men who do wrong usually pay for it, as do Razu 
mov, and Verloc, and Kurz ; and the villains sometime; 
meet a fitting end, as do Ric^ardo and Jones. But ever 
the sinners often pay a heavier penalty in suffering thar 
their deeds would justly warrant. Doctor Monygham 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 83 

shore-gang' to "the want of responsibility and to a sense 
)f security." The service of the sea, on the other hand, 
s "invested with an elemental moral beauty by the abso- 
ute straight-forwardness of its appeal and by the single- 
less of its purpose." It protects and consoles men. 

Through sordid and sublime intermingle in the strange 
cheme of life, though destiny appear incomprehensible 
md all men weak, though all visible things pass by, and 
he meaning of nothing shines clear, yet man is a spiritual 
)eing. Even the weakest is ennobled by glorious 
ispirations. 

The earliest of these is the glamour of youth. Although 
'onrad has outgrown any illusions of his own, he under- 
tands that illusion pervades the beginning of life. 
Youth and The Shadow Line when read in sequence show 
low completely Conrad comprehends the magic of youth 
ind the backward glance of the man who has crossed 
:hrough experience the shadow line into manhood. 
Illusion may go ; but once it has been ; and there is nothing 
equal to the power of it. 

When the disenchantment comes, as come it must, what 
then? In this practical world a man becomes a man 
when he puts away childish illusions. "Charles Gould 
was competent because he had no illusions." When it 
tomes about that a man has lost the thrill of adventure 
and the zest for a world seen through the eyes of youth, 
then he must put his hand to his work. Work is the 
having power in life, Marlow urges again and again: not 
just doing something, but real accomplishment which will 
count as the expression of a man's own personality, work 
in which he can find himself. "What does the price 



84 JOSEPH CONRAD 

matter if the trick be well done?" It is the spirit i 
which the work is undertaken that counts, — "an honeii 
concern for the right way of going to work." Thoug 
we have to "pick our way in crosslights," we trust the 

"we shall manage yet to go out decently in the end 
— but not so sure of it after all — and with dashed 
little help to expect from those we touch elbows with 
right and left." 

But action, Conrad avers, is consolatory. "It is tt 
enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusion 
Only in the conduct of our action can we find the sens 
of masteiy over the Fates." It is in putting our be; 
into that work which "obeys the particular earnestnei 
of our temperament" that we taste the comfort of a fine 
illusion — the belief in our own worth. 

With work must be faith, a deliberate belief in trutl 
Mere principles are not enough ; for they may go to smas 
in the crucial moment, as Jim and Razumov and tli 
others found. The restraining influences of ordered s< 
ciety, "the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunati 
asylums" are not enough ; for a man must be a man whe 
they no longer surround him. Therein, Almayer am 
Wilhelms and Kurtz failed. Lingard reflects "that 
truth and courage there is found wisdom." Strength li< 
in holding fast to truth, and truth is goodness. It is ( 
the spirit. Idealists, like Lena and Emilia Gould, ma 
be crushed by unconscious or deliberate materialism, bi 
the victory is theirs, for they have realized the trut' 
Sincerity, unselfishness, sympaithy, love, are the truth ( 
life. Courage, endurance, responsibility, fidelity to dut 
are the ethics on which the solidarity of mankind 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 85 

ounded. It is in the fellowship of these primal virtues 
hat the strength of mankind lies. 

"Those who read me know my conviction that the 
world, the temporal world, rests on a few very simple 
ideas; so simple that they must be as old as the 
hills. It rests, notably, among others, on the idea of 
Fidelity." 

5o Conrad declares in his preface to A Personal Record. 

Through the sympathetic understanding of other people, 

Marlow thinks, 

"there springs in us compassion, charity, indigna- 
tion, the sense of solidarity; and in minds of any 
largeness an inclination to that indulgence which is 
next door to affection." 

Because the men of the sea are held in strong bonds 
by the fellowship of the craft, because they are shut 
laway from "the vanities and errors of a world which 
follows no severe rule," by the exacting Ufe of the sea 
which knits together a ship's company in courage, endur- 
ance, faith, and loyalty, Conrad finds in sailors the highest 
type of this fundamental brotherhood of mankind. 
Sailors more than any other group of men face every 
moment of their lives the immensity of an unconcerned 
Nature. All men are equal before it. iTo the seaman 
the sea is ** the mistress of his existence and more in- 
scrutable than Destiny." Its ''glittering surface and light- 
less depths" become to him the symbol of life": At times 
it is a cruel and relentless monster, heartless in its mali- 
cious attempts to crush the insignificant atoms who defy 
its terrible might. The gale torments them, the sun and 
the stars stare pitilessly aloof. Man is perpetually sur- 
rounded by "the immense indifference of things." The 






86 JOSEPH CONRAD 

more honor to him, then, for his indomitable endurance,! 
and the ardor of his high endeavor. The Dark Powers! 
"always on the verge of triumph are perpetually foiled by| 
the steadfastness of men." It is in their steadfast perse- 
verance and their belief that loyalty, duty, obedience, ser- 
vice, endure in the race of men, that ahen is knit to ahen, 
nation to nation in a common kinship of passion, of in- 
domitability and of aspiration. It might have been of 
Joseph Conrad's achievement in literature that Mr. 
Woodberry wrote these words : 

"Idealism ... is in a sense a glorification of the 
commonplace. Its realism lies in the common lot of 
men; its distinction is to embrace truth for all, and 
truth in its universal forms of experience and person- 
ality, the primary, elementary, equally shared fates, 
passions, beliefs of the race." 

But small proportion of all that Conrad has written isi 
devoted to giving us information about his views on these 
matters. Instead he makes us acquainted with the things 
themselves through the stories of individual men and 
women who have upheld or denied them by the manner of 
their lives. Conrad has twice distinctly denied that he 
has any direct moral purpose: once, in the ''Preface" to 
The Nigger of the Narcissus, and again in "A Familiar 
(' Preface" to A Personal Record. He has no desire, he 
says, to reprove, to flatter, or to teach mankind. Art, 
not morality, is his aim. His task is to make men see 
life. His expression of the great spectacle becomes, then, 
of supreme importance to him. 

Because he sees actuality, he would make us see it too. 
It is only through his expression that he can do this. 
Style thus becomes identical with method. For that 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 87 

cnowledge of life which is objective and intellectual, he 
ises the method of photographic accuracy of detail, of 
inalysis, of logical synthesis, which demands keen eyes 
md impersonal recording— the method of ReaUsm, m 
Dther words. He gives to his observation precision 
:hrough the use of concrete words, telling phrases, concise 
sentences. There is no flowing melody here, but sharp, 
staccato measures. On the other hand, for that knowledge 
which is intuitive, not based on fact, knowledge which 
transcends objective experience— all that knowledge 
which he himself includes in the great word Mystery !— 
for this he employs the style of the Romanticist. §}^- 
bolism shadows it forth, and beauty is its shining light. 
Therefore he makes use of connotative words, of 
assonance, of rhythm, of fluent sentences, and of the re- 
frain of repeated phrases. It is in his metaphors of hght 
and darkness woven like delicate patterns through the 
fabric of the tales, but above all in his descriptions of the 
sea that we hear this subtle and suggestive music. Conrad 
does not hesitate, indeed, to write pure poetry. The idyll 
of Nostromo and Giselle, the glory of Monsieur George's 
love for Rita, the coming of the dawn to Nina and Dain 
Maroola, the moonrise over the "Patna," are all of them 

lyrics. 

In all that Conrad has written, the outlines of his 
sharply intense Realism are blurred by the softening 
shades of his Romanticism, blending like the mingled light 
and gloom of his own favorite allegory of this tenebrous 
life of ours. What he said of one of his own characters, 
he might well have written of himself ; 



88 - JOSEPH CONRAD 

"He appealed to all sides at once, — to the side 
turned perpetually to the light of day, and to that 
side of us, which, like the other hemisphere of the 
moon, exists stealthily in perpetual darkness, with 
only a fearful ashy light falling at times on the edge." 

and his own "imperishable reahty" comes to us 

"with a convincing, an irresistible force ... as 
though in our progress amongst fleeting gleams of 
light and the sudden revelations of human figures 
stealing with flickering flames within unfathomable 
and pellucid depths we had appproached nearer to 
absolute Truth, which, like Beauty itself, floats elu- 
sive, obscure, half submerged, in the silent still 
waters of mystery." 



APPENDICES 



APPENDICES 



I. BIBLIOGRAPHIES 

1920. A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF JOSEPH 

CONRAD (1895-1920). By Thomas J. Wise. London: 

. Printed for Private Circulation Only by Richard Clay 

& Sons, Ltd. 1920. 
This is the most recent bibliography on Conrad, and 
the most complete. It is compiled primarily for col- 
lectors of first editions of Conrad's works. 

1917. JOSEPH CONRAD: A CONTRIBUTION TOWARD A 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Compiled by Sara W. Eno, Refer- 
ence Librarian, Bryn Mawr College, in "Bulletin of 
Bibliography," Vol. 9, No. 6, April, 1917. 
This is a very complete bibliography. It contains also 
a bibliography of book reviews in current periodicals. 

1912. BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF- YOUNGER REPUTATIONS: 
JOSEPH CONRAD. By Vincent Sanger, in "The 
Bookman," 35:70, March, 1912. 
This is not complete, and extends only through the 
year of its publication, 1912. 

1914. Appendix to Richard Curie's book, JOSEPH CONRAD, 

A STUDY. New York: Doubleday, 1914. 
This is only a list of Conrad's works up to 1914. 

1915. Appendix to Hugh Walpole's book, JOSEPH CONRAD. 

London: Nisbet & Co., Ltd., 1915. New York: Holt, 
1915. 
This also contains only a list of Conrad's works. 

91 



92 JOSEPH CONRAD 



II. CONRAD'S WORKS 

A. Chronological List of Novels and Tales 
(With Original Editions) 

1895. ALMAYER'S FOLLY: A STORY OF AN EASTERN I 

RIVER. London: Unwin, 1895. N. Y.: Macmillan,, 
1895. 

1896. AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS I 

London: Unwin, 1896. N. Y.: Appleton, 1896. 1 

1898. THE NIGGER OF THE NARCISSUS: A TALE OF'' 
THE SEA. London: Heinemann, 1898. N. Y.: Dodd, 
Mead, 1898 (1897?) under title "Children of the Sea: 
A Tale of the Forecastle." N. Y.: Doubleday, 1914,,] 
under English title. 
(Appeared as a Serial in "The New Review," August 
to December, 1897.) 

1898. TALES OF UNREST. 

London, Unwin, 1898. N. Y., Scribner, 1898. 
Contents: KARAIN (1897); THE IDIOTS (1898); AN 

OUTPOST OF PROGRESS; THE RETURN; THE 

LAGOON (1897). 
See List of Short Stories. 

1900. LORD JIM: A ROMANCE 

London: Blackwood's, 1900. N. Y.: Doubleday, 1900. 
(Appeared as a serial in "Blackwood's," December, 
1899 to November, 1900.) 

1901. THE INHERITORS: AN EXTRAVAGANT STORY 
(In collaboration with Ford Madox Hueffer.) 
London: Heinemann, 1901. N. Y.: McClure, Phillips, 

1901. 

1902. YOUTH: A NARRATIVE, AND TWO OTHER STOR- 

IES. London: Blackwood's, 1902. N. Y.: McClure, 
Phillips, 1903. 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 93 

1902. YOUTH was published in "Blackwood's Maga- 
zine" in September, 1898 and then serially in "The 
Critic" February to May, 1902. 

1899. HEART OF DARKNESS was published serially 
in "Blackwood's," February to April, 1899. 

1902. THE END OF THE TETHER was published 
serially in "Blackwood's," July to December, 1902. 

1902. TYPHOON. 

London: Heinemann, 1903. N. Y.: Putnam, 1902. 
(Appeared as a serial in "Pall Mall" Magazine, 

January to March 1902.) 
Translated into French by Andr6 Gide in "Revue de 

Paris," March 1, 1918— March 15, 1918. 

1903. FALK: AMY FOSTER: TOMORROW. (Three Stories) 
N. Y.: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1903. 

See List of Short Stories. 

1903. ROMANCE: A NOVEL. (In collaboration with Ford 

Madox Hueffer.) 
London: Smith Elder, 1903. N. Y.: McClure, Phillips, 
1904. 

1904. NOSTROMO: A TALE OF THE SEABOARD. 
London: Harper, 1904. N. Y. Harper, 1904. 
(Appeared as a serial in "T. P.'s Weekly," January 

29 to October 7, 1904.) 

1906. THE MIRROR OF THE SEA: MEMORIES AND 

IMPRESSIONS. London: Methuen, 1906. N. Y.: 
Harper, 1906. 
(Sections previously printed in "Pall Mall," "The Daily 
Mail," and "Blackwood's," 1905—1906.) 

1907. THE SECRET ACENT: A SIMPLE TALE. 
London: Methuen, 1907. N. Y.: Harper, 1907. 
(Appeared as a serial in "Ridgeway's Weekly," October 

6, 1906 to January 12, 1907.) 

1908. A SET OF SIX: TALES. 

London: Methuen, 1908. N. Y.: McClure, Phillips, 1908. 
Contents: GASPER RUIZ, THE INFORMER, THE 

BRUTE, (1907). AN ANARCHIST, (1906), THE 

DUEL, (1908), IL CONDE, (1907). 
See List of Short Stories. 



94 JOSEPH CONRAD 

1909. SOME REMINISCENCES. 

Published serially in "English Review," December' 

1908 to June 1909. 
1912. Published by Nash, London. 
1912. N. Y., Harper, under the title A PERSONAI 
RECORD. 

1911. UNDER WESTERN EYES: A NOVEL. 
London: Methuen, 1911. N. Y.: Harper, 1911. 
(Published serially in "English Review," December; 

1910 to October 1911.) 

1912. 'TWIXT LAND AND SEA: TALES. 
London: Dent, 1912. N. Y.: Doran, 1912. 

Contents: FREYA OF THE SEVEN ISLES, A SMILE 
OF FORTUNE, and THE SECRET SHARER. (1910); 

1914. CHANCE: A TALE IN TWO PARTS. 
London: Methuen, 1914. N. Y.: Doubleday, 1914. 
(Appeared as a serial in "The New York Herald, 

January 21 to June 30, 1912.) 

1915. VICTORY: AN ISLAND TALE. 
London: Methuen, 1915. N. Y.: Doubleday, 1915. 
(The cloth edition published by Doubleday shows oni 

the inside board-covering a map illustrating the 
approximate scenes of Conrad's stories. The same^ 
map is in "The Bookman" 41:128.) 

This novel has been dramatized by B. Macdonaldlj 
Hastings, and presented at the Globe Theatre, Lon- 
don, with Miss Marie Lohr as Lena. See an un- 
favorable review of the play, "Collared Conrad" by 
Gilbert Cannan in "The Nation," April 5, 1919. It 
has also been produced in the moving pictures. 

1915. WITHIN THE TIDES: TALES. 

London: Dent, 1915. N. Y.: Doubleday, 1916. 

Contents: THE PLANTER OF MALATA, (1914), THE 
PARTNER, (1911), THE INN OF THE TWO 
WITCHES, (1913), BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS, 
(1914). 

See List of Short Stories. 



L920. 



I 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 95 

917. THE SHADOW LINE: A CONFESSION. 

London: Dent, 1917. N. Y.: Doubleday, 1917. 
(Published serially in the "English Review," Septem- 
ber 1916 to March 1917.) 

919. THE ARROW OF GOLD. 

London: Dent, 1919. N. Y.: Doubleday, 1919. 
(Published as a serial in "Lloyd's Magazine," December 
1918 to February 1920.) 

THE RESCUE: A ROMANCE OF THE SHALLOWS. 

London: Dent, 1920. N. Y.: Doubleday, 1920. 
(Published as a serial in "Land and Water" [England], 

January 30 to July 31, 1919; and in "Romance, 

November, 1919 to May, 1920. 

1921. NOTES ON MY BOOKS. 

N. Y.: Doubleday, February, 1921. 

This is a collection of Conrad's notes on the source 
L and inception of the characters and plot of his stories. 

I These notes are also published as prefatory matter 

I in the Sun-Dial Edition of his works, 1921. 

^The complete works of Joseph Conrad are now Published 
in uniform cloth or limp leather (The Deep Sea Limp Leather 
Edition) editions by Doubleday, Page & Company, Garden 
City, N. Y. 

The Sun Dial Edition of Conrad's collected works in ten 
voTumes.was published in 1921 by W. Heinemann, London 
and by Doubleday, Page & Company, Garden City, N Y. This 
edition is limited to 750 copies, the first volume of each/^t 
signed by the author. The twenty Prefaces give Conrad s 
comments on the "obscure origins" of his tales. 

B. Alphabetical List of Short Stories 

AMY FOSTER 

Appeared in "The Illustrated London News," December 

14, 21, 28, 1901. 
Published in FALK, 1903. 



96 JOSEPH CONRAD 

AN ANARCHIST 

In "Harper's Monthly" 113:406, August, 1906. 
Now published in A SET OF SIX, 1908. 

THE ARISTOCRAT (PRINCE ROMAN) 

In "The Metropolitan," January 1912, under title of TH 
ARISTOCRAT. 

"Oxford and Cambridge Review," January 1912 und 
title of PRINCE ROMAN. 

BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS 

Appeared under the title LAUGHING ANNE in "Tl 

Metropolitan," September, 1914. 
Published in WITHIN THE TIDES, 1915. 

BIG BRIERLY (from LORD JIM) 

In "Living Age," 229:331, May 4, 1901. 

BLACK MATE 

In "London Mail," April 1908. 

THE BRUTE 

In "The Daily Chronicle," December 5, 1906. 

In "McClure's," 30:72, November 1907. Illustrated bt 

four pictures in color by E. L. Blumenschein. 
Now published in A SET OF SIX, 1908. 

IL CONDE 

In "Cassell's Magazine," August, 1908. 

In "The Canadian Magazine," 41:595, October, 1913. 

Now published in A SET OF SIX, 1915 as IL CONDE. 

THE DUEL, see A POINT OF HONOUR 

THE END OF THE TETHER 

In "Blackwood's" 172:1, 202, 395, 520, 685, 794, July t 

December, 1902. 
Now published in YOUTH. 

FALK 

Published in FALK, 1903. 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 97 

'REYA OF THE SEVEN ISLES 

In "The Metropolitan," New York, April, 1912. 
Published in " 'Twixt Land and Sea," 1912. 

ASPAR RUIZ 

In "Pall Mall Magazine," July to October, 1906. 
Published in A SET OF SIX. 

[EART OF DARKNESS 

In "Blackwood's," 165:193, 479, 634, February to April, 

1899. 
In "Living Age," 225:665; 226:21, June to August, 1900. 
Now published in YOUTH. 

lER CAPTIVITY 

In "Blackwood's," 178:325, September, 1905. 

'HE IDIOTS 

Published in TALES OF UNREST, 1908. 

'HE INFORMER 

In "Harper's Magazine," December, 1906. 
Published in A SET OF SIX, 1908. 

'HE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES 
In "Metropolitan," May, 1913. 
In "Pall Mall," 1913. 
Now published in WITHIN THE TIDES. 

CARAIN: A MEMORY 

In "Blackwood's," 162:630, November, 1897. 
In "Living Age," 215:796, December, 1897. 
Now published in TALES OF UNREST. 

^HE LAGOON 

In "Cornhill," 75:59, January, 1897. 
Now published in TALES OF UNREST. 

LN OUTPOST OF PROGRESS 
In "Cosmopolis," 6:609, 7:1. 
Now published in TALES OF UNREST. 



98 JOSEPH CONRAD 

THE PARTNER 

In "Harper's Magazine," 123:850, November, 1911. 
Now pulished in WITHIN THE TIDES. 

THE PLANTER OF MALATA 

In "Metropolitan," June and July, 1914. 
Published in WITHIN THE TIDES, 1915. 

A POINT OF HONOR (THE DUEL) 

In "Pall Mall Magazine," January to May, 1908. 
In "The Forum," 40:89, 142, 229, 348, July to October, 19(j 
Now published under the title THE DUEL in A SET (' 
SIX. 

THE RETURN 

Published in TALES OF UNREST, 1898. 

THE SECRET SHARER 

In "Harper's Magazine," 121:349, 530, August to Septe 

ber, 1910. 
Now published in 'TWIXT LAND AND SEA. 

A SMILE OF FORTUNE 

In "The London Magazine," February, 1911. 
Published in 'TWIXT LAND AND SEA, 1912. 

TO-MORROW 

In "Pall Mall," 27:533, August, 1902. 

Now published in FALK. 

Dramatized by Joseph Conrad under the title ONE D.^ 

MORE: A PLAY IN ONE ACT. Published in "T 

English Review," 15:16, August, 1913. 
(The foot-note states that the play was performed 

1904 by the Stage Society, and also at the Theatre 

rOeuvre, Paris.) 

YOUTH 

In "Blackwood's," 164:309, September, 1898. 
Now published in YOUTH. 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 99 

C. Miscellaneous Writings by Conrad 

98. ALPHONSE DAUDET 

"The Outlook," April 9, 1898. Now in NOTES ON 
LIFE AND LETTERS. 

AN OBSERVER IN MALAY 

"The Academy," April 23, 1898. Now in NOTES ON 
LIFE AND LETTERS. 

TALES OF THE SEA 

"The Outlook," June 4, 1898. Now in NOTES ON 
LIFE AND LETTERS. 

01. "THE INHERITORS" 

Author's letter to the New York Times Supplement 
in regard to the book, August 24, 1901, p. 603. 

04. ANATOLE FRANCE 

"The Speaker," July 16, 1904. Now in NOTES ON 
LIFE AND LETTERS. 

GUY DE MAUPASSANT 

Introduction to "Yvette and Other Stories," trans- 
lated by Ada Galsworthy. Now in NOTES ON LIFE 
AND LETTERS. 

05. HENRY JAMES: AN APPRECIATION 

"North American Review," 180:102-108, January, 1905. 
Reprinted in "North American Review," 203:585, 
I April 1916. 

Now in NOTES ON LIFE AND LETTERS. 
THE ART OF FICTION 

"Harper's Weekly," 49 pt. 1: 690, May 1905. 

Now published as the preface to THE NIGGER OF 

THE NARCISSUS. 

BOOKS 

"The Speaker," July 15. 1905. 

Now in NOTES ON LIFE AND LETTERS. 

AUTOCRACY AND WAR 

"Fortnightly Review," o. s. 84:1, July, 1905. 
"Fortnightly Review," n. s. 78:1, July, 1905. 
"North American Review," 181:33-55, July, 1905. 
Now in NOTES ON LIFE AND LETTERS. 



loo JOSEPH CONRAD 

i 

1908. Review of Anatole France's L'ISLE DES PENGOUIJ 
"English Review," 1:188, December, 1908. ' 

1912. SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE LOSS OF Tj 

TITANIC 

"English Review," 11:304, May 1912. 

Now in NOTES ON LIFE AND LETTERS. 

SOME ASPECTS OF THE ADMIRABLE INQUIRY 
"English Review," 11:581, July, 1912. 
Now in NOTES ON LIFE AND LETTERS. 

1913. ONE DAY MORE (Dramatization of TO-MORROW 

"English Review," 15:16, August, 1913. 

1914. THE LESSON OF THE COLLISION: A MONOGRA 

UPON THE LOSS OF THE "EMPRESS OF IND 
"The Illustrated London News," June 6, 1914. 

1915. THE SHOCK OF WAR 

"Daily News," March 29, 1915. 

TO POLAND IN WAR-TIME L 

"Daily News," March 31, 1915. 

THE NORTH SEA ON THE EVE OF WAR 
"Daily News," April 6, 1915. 

MY RETURN TO CRACOW 
"Daily News," April 9, 1915. 

These four papers are now published in NOTES J 
LIFE AND LETTERS under the title of POLAI 
REVISITED. 



1917. THE WARRIOR'S SOUL 

"Land and Water," March 29, 1917. 

1918. MY "LORD JIM" j 

Conrad's answers to the objections against his I 
of Marlow, and his account of the real Lord .c 
The preface to the new Sun-Dial edition of LCil 
JIM. "Bookman," 46:539, January, 1918. 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 



:oi 



"MR. CONRAD IS NOT A JEW" 

A letter by Conrad repudiating the statement that 

he is a Jew, and asserting that he is a Roman 

Catholic. 

"The New Republic," 16:109, August 24, 1918. 

"WELL DONE" 

"Daily Mail," August 22, 23, 24, 1918. 

Now in NOTES ON LIFE AND LETTERS. 
THE FIRST NEWS 

"Reveille," No. I, August, 1918. 

Now in NOTES ON LIFE AND LETTERS. 
TRADITION 

"Daily Mail," March 18, 1918. 

Now in NOTES ON LIFE AND LETTERS. 

POLAND: THE CRIME OF PARTITION 

"Fortnightly Review," 111:657-669, May, 1919. 
Now published under the title of THE CRIME OF 
^PARTITION in NOTES ON LIFE AND LETTERS. 

CONFIDENCE 

"Daily Mail," June 30, 1919. 

Now in NOTES ON LIFE AND LETTERS. 

STEPHEN CRANE: A NOTE WITHOUT DATES 
"London Mercury," 1:192, December, 1919. 
"Bookman," 50:529-31, February, 1920. 
Now in NOTES ON LIFE AND LETTERS. 

)20. ON POLAND 

"The New York Tribune," April 5, 1920. 

THREE CONRAD NOVELS 

"Dial," 69: 619-630, December, 1920. 
Now published as prefaces to the three novels: AN 
OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS, LORD JIM, NOS- 
TROMO in the Sun-Dial Collected Edition. 

321. FIVE PREFACES 

"London Mercury," 3:493-509, March, 1921, 



102 JOSEPH CONRAD 

III. CRITICISMS OF CONRAD 
A. Books on Conrad 

1914. JOSEPH CONRAD: A STUDY 

By Richard Curie. Doubleday, Page & Company, 191 
(This appeared first in part as articles in "The Bool, 
man," July to October, 1914, 30:662 and 40:99, 187,i 
This is the first complete book written solely to crit 
cize and estimate Conrad's work, and it still remain 
the longest appreciation that has appeared. Ml 
Curie explains the reasons for Conrad's unpopularit 
with the majority of the reading public, then pn 
ceeds to analyze his greatness. The biographic 
sketch is of the briefest in order that more spac 
may be given to actual criticism of his work. TW 
second chapter is given over to elementary synopse 
of each of Conrad's novels and stories — "spade workl 
for the uninitiated, Mr. Curie calls it. There is als 
a bibliography. 

1915. JOSEPH CONRAD: A SHORT STUDY 

By Wilson Follett. Privately printed by Doubleda: 
Page & Company, 1915. 
This small volume is one of the best criticisms c^ 
Conrad yet written. It is a scholarly critique of th 
purpose, philosophy, style, and method of Conrac 
Mr. Follett's style is not barrenly lucid, but it i 
always distinguished. 

1915. JOSEPH CONRAD 

By Hugh Walpole. London, Nisbet & Company, Ltd 
1915. N. Y., Holt, 1915. 

Contains English and American bibliographies o 
Conrad's novels. 

This, the shortest book about Conrad, is one of th 
most sympathetic appreciations. After giving 
short biographical account of Conrad as a necessar 
prologue to an understanding of his work. Mi 
Walpole discusses him as Novelist, (that is, as t 
the Theme, as to the Form, as to the Creation o 
character), as Poet, and as Romanticist and Realist 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 103 

B. Articles about Conrad 
First List 

104. Clifford, Hugh. THE GENIUS OF MR. JOSEPH 
CONRAD. "North American Review," 178:842, June, 
1904. 

This is one of the most sympathetic of the early reviews. 

)17. Follet, H. F. and W. Follett. CONTEMPORARY 
NOVELISTS— JOSEPH CONRAD. "The Atlantic," 
119:233-43, February, 1917. 
This is based to some extent on Wilson Follett's book 
on Conrad. It asserts that the realism of Conrad 
is due to his understanding of the "tragic unfitness 
of things," especially as revealed in those souls cut 
off by barriers of race, of spirit, of accident. It is 
a discussion, also, of Conrad's technique, and of his 
philosophy. 

508. rialsworthy, John. JOSEPH CONRAD: A DISQUISI- 
TION. "Fortnightly Review" o. s. 89:627-633, April, 
1908. "Fortnightly Review" n. s. 83:627. "Living 
Age," 257: 416, May 16, 1908. 
This is one of the first and finest appreciations of 
Conrad. Galsworthy discusses the "certain cosmic 
spirit" of Conrad's art, and his method of expressing 
that spirit, and concludes with an ironic explanation 
of his lack of popularity. This article through its 
critical enthusiasm did much to win recognition for 
Conrad. 

911. Hueffer, Ford Madox. THE GENIUS OF JOSEPH 
CONRAD. "English Review," 10:66-83, December, 
1911. 
This is a sympathetic and very enthusiastic apprecia- 
tion of Conrad's art by his fellow novelist and 
collaborator. Hueffer acclaims Conrad "the finest 
of the Elizabethans." This article is especially 
illuminating in regard to Conrad's method. Hueffer 
used italicized words in paragraphs from ROMANCE 
to show that the descriptive phrases are his, the 
words of action, Conrad's — contrary to the belief of 
most critics. Conrad's method, he says, is: "Never 
state: present. Never comment: state." 



I04 JOSEPH CONRAD 

1918. Robertson, J. M. (M.P.). THE NOVELS OF JOSEPH 
CONRAD. "North American Review," 208: 439-53 
September, 1918. ' 

This is one of the latest good appreciations of Conrad. 
After a comparison of Meredith and Conrad, Mr. 
Robertson proceeds to a discussion of Conrad's 
method of plot development, of character creation, of 
treatment of atmosphere, and of his realism and 
idealism. 

1915. Symons, Arthur. CONRAD. "Forum," 53:579-592 
May, 1915. ' 

(A review of this article is in "Current Opinion" 
January, 1918.) 

Symons cannot be disregarded as a critic. Neverthe- 
less, his article, though thoroughly appreciative of 
Conrad's genius, leaves the impression that Conrad 
is more than anything else a cynic. Symons dis- 
cusses both his philosophy and his technique. 
1918. de Voisins, Gilbert. JOSEPH CONRAD: MEMOIRE.: 
"Revue de Paris," pt. 2:5-16, March 1, 1918. 

This critic insists that Conrad is a romancer, not a 
realist, and admires him especially for his creation 
of atmosphere. He criticises several books in detail. 
1918. Follett, Helen Thomas and Wilson. SOME MODERN 
NOVELISTS: APPRECIATIONS AND ESTIMATES. 
NO. XII, JOSEPH CONRAD. 

This is the article that appeared in "The Atlantic," 
February, 1917, somewhat enlarged. 

1920. Hueffer, Ford Madox. THUS TO REVISIT. "English 
Review," 31:5. "The Dial," 69:52-60, 132- 141, 239- 
246, July, August, September, 1920. 
This is a reminiscence by Mr. Hueffer of his collabora- 
tion with Conrad. It contains a revealing discussion 
of Conrad's methods. 

Second List 

1912. Bjorkman, E. JOSEPH CONRAD: MASTER OF 
LITERARY COLOR. (With portrait and bibliogra- 
phy to 1912.) "Review of Reviews," 445: 557, May, 
1912. Reprinted in VOICES OF TOMORROW by the 
same author under heading "General Knights of 
Modern Literature." M, Kennerly, pub., 1913, 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 105 

This is an excellent summary of the life of Conrad, 
and analysis of his style. Bjorkman objects to Gals- 
worthy's statement that to Conrad "nature is first, 
man second." 

Clifford, Hugh. THE ART OF MR. JOSEPH CONRAD. 

"Spectator," 89:827, November 29, 1902. "Living 

Age," 236:120, January 10, 1903. 
This is really a book review of YOUTH. It is devoted 

primarily to a discussion of Conrad's power of 

description. 

Colbron, Grace Isabel. JOSEPH CONRAD'S WOMEN. 

"Bookman," 38:476, January, 1914. 
This is a discussion of the psychology of Conrad's 

women, and of the subordinate place they take in 

his stories. 

Donlin. George Barnard. THE ART OF JOSEPH 
CONRAD. "Dial," 61:172, September 21, 1916. 

This is really an explanation of the limited circle of 
Conrad's readers through a discussion of his method, 
his irony, his philosophy, his style. 

Huneker, James. THE GENIUS OF JOSEPH CON- 
RAD. "North American," 200:270-179, August, 1914. 
Reprinted in IVORY APES AND PEACOCKS, Scrib- 
ner's, 1915. 

This is an appreciation of Conrad as an artist. In 
these days "Joseph Conrad stands solitary among 
English novelists as the ideal of a pure and disin- 
terested artist." 

James, Henry. THE NEW NOVEL, 1914. NOTES ON 
NOVELISTS, p. 345-353. C. Scribner's Sons. 

This is essentially a discussion of Conrad's method as 
revealed in CHANCE. It is unfortunately written 
in Mr. James's most tortuous style. 

Mencken, H. L. JOSEPH CONRAD. In A BOOK OF 
PREFACES. A. A. Knopf, 1917. 

This is a continuous spluttering of an apparent 
misogynist. Mr. Mencken likes Conrad because he 
makes him out to be the same kind of cynic as him- 
self. There is some wheat in much chaff. The 
article contains an entertaining criticism of the 
criticisms of Conrad- 



io6 JOSEPH CONRAD 

1918. Pease, Frank. JOSEPH CONRAD. "Nation," 107:510- 
13, November 2, 1918. 
This is a short but well-written and individual dis- 
cussion of the new type of adventure found in Con- 
rad's novels and tales. Conrad, Mr. Pease thinks, 
has "remade adventure." 

1916. Phelps, William Lyon. THE ADVANCE OF THE 
ENGLISH NOVEL. Published N. Y., Dodd, Mead & 
Co., 1916. On Conrad, Chapter VIII, pp. 192-209. 
(Originally appeared as a series of articles in "Book- 
man," 42:297, May 1916.) 
This is a criticism in Mr. Phelps' usual entertaining 
style of the work of Conrad as an artist. After a 
brief resume of the life of Conrad, Mr. Phelps dis- 
cusses his style, his method, and his individual 
books, and incidentally compares Conrad with other 
writers, notably Stevenson. 

1912. Reynolds, Stephen. JOSEPH CONRAD AND SEA 
FICTION. "Quarterly Review," 217: 159-180, July, 
1912. "Living Age," 276:264, February, 1913. 
This is primarily an appreciation of Conrad's criticism 
of life and character as revealed in his novels of the 
sea. Other books, however, are also included in the 
discussion. 

1916 Freeman, John. THE MODERNS, pp. 243-264. Lon- 
don, R. Scott, 1916. 

1919 Hall, Leland. JOSEPH CONRAD. Chapter IX, pp. 
161-179 in ENGLISH LITERATURE DURING THE 
LAST HALF CENTURY, by J. W. Cuniffe, N. Y. 
Macmillan Co., 1919. 

1919 Moore, Edward. A NOTE ON MR. CONRAD. "New 

Statesman," 13: 590-2, September 13, 1919. "Living 
Age," 304:101-4, January 10, 1920. "Current Opinion," 
67:320-1, December, 1919. (Condensed, with an ex- 
cellent photograph of Conrad.) 
This is an interesting discussion of Conrad as a skeptic, 
and as a psychologist who sees the men and women 
he has created not as living souls, but as mere 
laboratory specimens of humanity. 

1920 Gwynn, Stephen. NOVELS OF JOSEPH CONRAD. 

"Edinburgh Review," 231:318-19, April, 1920. 
This is an analysis of fifteen of Conrad's books, includ- 
ing a brief discussion of his method and philosophy. 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 107 

1921. Jean, Aubry, G. JOSEPH CONRAD'S CONFESSIONS. 
"Fortnightly Review," 115:782-90, May, 1921. 
This is a discussion of Conrad's attitude toward his 
own creative writing and toward life, under phase of 
a review of the "Author's Notes" printed as prefaces 
to the collected edition. 

Third List 

1914. Boynton, H. W. JOSEPH CONRAD. "The Nation," 

98:395-7, April 9, 1914. 
This is the usual type of article, summarizing briefly 
Conrad's life, and then proceeding to analyze the 
"esteem" in which he is coming to oe held, through 
a discussion of his subjects, his method, his style, 
^ and his philosophy. 

1912. Cooper, Frederick Tabor. REPRESENTATIVE ENG- 
LISH STORY TELLERS: JOSEPH CONRAD. "The 
Bookman," 35:61-70, March, 1912. 
This is a discussion of (1) the methods of Conrad, and 
(2) of his works. It begins as an answer to Gals- 
worthy's statement in his article that Conrad has 
the "cosmic spirit," that is, that the Universe is 
always saying, "The little part called man is always 
smaller than the whole." Mr. Cooper insists that 
the "vital and tremendous human interest" in Con- 
rad's books is their most essential spirit. 

1915. Curie, Richard. JOSEPH CONRAD AND VICTORY. 

"Fortnightly Review," 104:670 October, 1915. 
This is a book review of "Victory," contrasting it pri- 
marily in regard to method, with "Chance," and pro- 
ceeding to a discussion of the stages in the evolution 
of Conrad's method as seen in his other works. 

1911. Curran, E. F. A MASTER OF LANGUAGE. "The 
Catholic World, 92:769-805, March, 1911. 
This long appreciation of Conrad is full of enthusiastic 
but uncritical estimates of characters and books. 
The author's orthodox Roman Catholicism unexpect- 
edly and naively colors his remarks. 

1918. Cutler, Frances Wentworth. WHY MARLOW? "Se- 
wanee Review," 26: 28, January, 1918. 
This is an analysis of the purpose of Marlow in Con- 
rad's method of presenting his stories. 



io8 JOSEPH CONRAD 

1919. Gerould, Katherine Fullerton. EIDOLONS OF I 
ULYSSES. "The Bookman," 49:368, May, 1919. 
This is an enthusiastic review of "The Arrow of Gold." 
Mrs. Gerould ranks Conrad with the greatest creative 
writers of the world. 

1906. Macy, John Albert. JOSEPH CONRAD. "The Atlantic 
Monthly," 98:697-702, November, 1906. 
This is the earliest "Atlantic" recognition of Conrad. 
The author is evidently puzzled by Conrad's origin- 
ality, which he recognizes, but which he cannot re- 
frain from disparaging. However, he grants that 
Conrad is "really important," especially as a "fine 
writer of sentences." 

1917. Macy, John. KIPLING AND CONRAD. "The Dial," 
62:441, May 17, 1917. 
This is a review of THE SHADOW LINE with empha- 
sis on Conrad's descriptive power. 

1919. Dargan, E. Preston. THE VOYAGES OF CONRAD. 
"The Dial," 66:638-41, June 28, 1919. 
This is a somewhat superficial review of Conrad's 
work to 1919. 

1919. Reilly, Joseph. THE SHORT STORIES OF JOSEPH 

CONRAD. "Catholic World," 109:163-75, May, 1919. 
Mr. Reilly discusses Conrad's use of setting, and the 
reality of his characters; also his philosophy of life 
as revealing his Slavic temperament. 

1920. Seldes, Gilbert. A NOVELIST OF COURAGE. "The 

Dial," 69:52, 132, August, 1920. 
This is a review of THE RESCUE with a brief dis- 
cussion of Conrad's style. 

1920. Bellesor, A. LE PREMIER ROMAN DE CONRAD: 
LA FOLIE ALMAYER. "Revue Politique et Litter- 
aire" (Revue Bleue), 58:599-603, October, 1920. 

1921 McFee, William. THE SEA— AND CONRAD. "Book- 
man," 53:102-8, April, 1921. 
This is a reminiscent commentary of the effect of read- 
ing Conrad on different types of people, especially 
on seamen. 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 109 

IV. BOOK REVIEWS 

(Partial List Only) 

ALMAYER'S FOLLY 

Academy, 47:502, 1895. 
Athenaeum, 1895, pt. 1, 671. 
Bookman, 2:39, August, 1895. 

AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS 
Academy, 49:525, June 27, 1896. 
.Athenaeum, 1896, pt. 2:91, July 18, 1896. 
Bookman, 4:166, October, 1896. 
N. Y. Times, 1896, September 23, p. 10. 
Saturday Review, 81:509, May 1916. 

THE ARROW OF GOLD 

Athenaeum, p. 720, August 8, 1919. 
Bookman, 49:368, May, 1919. (K. F. Gerould) 
Boston Transcript, p. 8, April 20, 1919. 
Boston Transcript, p. 11, May 24, 1919. 
Nation, 108:951, June 14, 1919. 
New Republic, 19:56, May 10, 1919. 
N. Y. Times, 24:189, April 13, 1919. 
Outlook, 122:122, May 21, 1919. 

Publishers' Weekly, 95:1129, April 19, 1919. (F. T. Cooper) 
Living Age, 302:792-5, September 27, 1919. (S. Colvin) 
Deux Mondes, 6 per 53:676-85, Octobre 1, 1919. (L. Gillet) 
Saturday Review, 128:179, August 23, 1919. 
Spectator, 122:410, September 27, 1919. 
The Times, London, Literary Supplement, p. 422, August 
7, 1919. 

CHANCE 

Academy, 86:145, January 31, 1914. (F. T. Cooper) 

Atlantic, 114:530, October, 1914. 

Athenaeum, 1914, 1:88, January 17, 1914. 

Bookman, 39:323, May, 1914. 

Boston Transcript, p. 9, January 31, 1914. 

Boston Transcript, p. 8, March 21, 1914. 

Independent, 78:173, April 27, 1914. 

Literary Digest, 48:1119, May 9, 1914. 

Nation, 98:396, April 9. 1914. 

N. Y. Times, 19:396, April 9, 1914. 



no JOSEPH CONRAD 

Outlook, 107:45, May 2, 1914. 
Publishers' Weekly, 85: 1335, April 18, 1914. 
Review of Reviews, 49: 373, March 1914. 
Saturday Review, 117:117, January 24, 1914. 
Spectator, 112:101, January 17, 1914. 
Springfield Republican, p. 5, April 16, 1914. 

FALK 

Bookman, 18:311, November 1, 1903. (F. T. Cooper) 
N. Y. Times Supplement, 1903, October 24, p. 756. 
N. Y. Tribune Supplement, 1903, September 27, p. 11. 
Academy, 64:463, May 9, 1903. 

THE INHERITORS 

Academy, 61:93, August 3, 1901. 
Athenaeum, 1901, pt. 2, p. 151, August 3, 1901. 
N. Y. Times Supplement, 1901, July 13, p. 499. 
N. Y. Times Supplement, 1901, August 24. (By Conrad 
himself) 

LORD JIM 

Academy, 59:443, November 10, 1900. 

Athenaeum, 1900 pt. 2:576, November 3, 1900. 

Bookman, 13:187, April, 1901. 

Current Literature, 30:222, February, 1901. 

N. Y. Times Supplement, 1900, November 10, p. 770. 

N. Y. Times Supplement, 1900, December 1, pp. 836, 839. 

N. Y. Tribune Supplement, 1900, November 3, p. 10. 

Speaker, n. s., 3, 215. 

THE MIRROR OF THE SEA 

Literary Digest, 33:685, November 10, 1906. 

The Times, London, 5:344, October 12, 1906. 

Nation, 83:374, November 1, 1906. 

Outlook, 84:678, November 17, 1906. 

Academy, 71:393, October 20, 1906. 

Athenaeum, 1906, pt. 2:513, October 27, 1906. 

Spectator, 97:889, December 1, 1906. 

N. Y. Times, Supplement, 1906, November 10, p. 734. 

Outlook (London), 18:480. 

THE NIGGER OF THE NARCISSUS 
Academy, 53:163, February 5, 1898. 
Bookman, 8:91, October, 1898. 
Bookman, 39:563, July, 1914. 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM iii 

Book Buyer, 16:350, May, 1898. 

Illustrated London News, 112:50 & 172. 

Nation, 67:53. 

N. Y. Times Supplement, 1898, May 21, p. 344. 

N. Y. Tribune Supplement, 1898, April 3, p. 17. 

Pall Mall Magazine, 14:428. 

Speaker, 17:83. 

NOSTROMO 

Atlantic, 97:45, January, 1906. 

Athenaeum, 1904, p. 2; 619, November 5, 1904. 

Bookman, 20:217, November, 1904. (F. T. Cooper) 

Dial, 38:126, February 16, 1905. 

Critic, 46:377. 

Independent, 58:557. 

N. Y. Times Supplement, 1904, October 29, p. 735 and 

December 31, p. 944. 
Spectator, 93:800. 
Reader, 5:618, April, 1905. 

NOTES ON LIFE AND LETTERS 

N. Y. Times, p. 10, May 8, 1921. 

The Times, London, Literary Supplement, p. 141, March 

3, 1921. 
The New Statesman, 16:674. (Robert Lynd) 
Living Age, 309:221-4, April 23, 1921. (Reprint of R. 

Lynd's article.) 
Current Opinion, 70:819-21, June, 1921. 
New Republic, vol. 27:25, June 1, 1921. 

NOTES ON MY BOOKS 

Fortnightly Review, May, 1921, pp. 782-790. ("Joseph 
Conrad's Confessions," by G. Jean-Aubry.) 

A PERSONAL RECORD (SOME REMINISCENCES) 

Athenaeum, 1912, 1:124, February 3. 
Bookman, London, 42:26, April, 1912. 
Catholic World, 95:254, May, 1912. 
Dial, 52:172, March 1, 1912. 
Independent, 72:678, March 28, 1912. 
Nation, 94:238, March 7, 1912. 
N. Y. Times, 17:77, February 18, 1912. 
North American, 195: 569, April, 1912. 
Spectator, 109:60, July 13, 1912. 



112 JOSEPH CONRAD 

THE RESCUE 

Athenaeum, p. 15, July 2, 1920. 

Booklist, 16:346, July 1920. 

Boston Transcript, p. 4, May 26, 1920 

Catholic World, 112:394, December, 1920 

Dial. 69:191, August, 1920. (Gilbert Seldes) 

Freeman, 1:454, July, 1920. 

Nation, 110:804, June 12, 1920. 

N. Y. Times, 25:263, May 23, 1920 

Outlook, 125:280, June 9, 1920. 

Weekly Review, 2:604, June 5, 1920 

Weekly Review, 2:629, June 16, 1920 

Spectator, 124:52, July 10, 1920. 

'^^iQoT^"^'^^' London, Literary Supplement, p. 419, July 1] 

Wisconsin Library Bulletin, 16:193, November, 1920. 

ROMANCE 

Academy, 65:469, October 31, 1903. 

Athenaeum, 1903, pt. 2:610, November 7 1903 

Dial, 37:37, July 16, 1904. 

Bookman, 20:544. 

N. Y. Times Supplement, 1904. May 14, p. 325 

Outlook, N. Y., 77:424-5. 



THE SECRET AGENT 

Academy, 74:413, February 1, 1908. 

Athenaeum, 1907, pt. 2:361, September 28, 1907. 

Albany Review, London, 2:229. 

Bookman, 26:531, January. 1908. (Stewart Edward White) 

Bookman. 26:669. February. 1908. (F. T. Cooper) 

Current Literature, 44:223, February, 1908 

Dial, 43:252. October 16, 1907. 

Independent, 64:105, January 9. 1908. 

Nation. 85: 285, September 26, 1907. 

N. Y. Times, 12:562, September 21. 1907. 

N. Y. Times. 12:655, October 19, 1907. 

Outlook. London. 20:652. 

Outlook. N. Y.. 87:309, October 13. 1907. 

Putnam's. 3:370. December, 1907. 

Spectator, 99:400, September 21. 1907. 

The Times, London, 6:285, September 20, 1907. 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 113 

A SET OF SIX 

Athenaeum, 1908, pt. 2:237, August 29, 1908. 
Boston Transcript, p. 6, January 23, 1915. 
Catholic World, 100:825, March, 1915. 
Nation, 100:199, February 18, 1915. 
N. Y. Times, 20:38, January 31, 1915. 
Outlook, London, 22:246. 

Publishers' Weekly, 87:480, February, 13. 1915. 
Spectator, 101:237, August 15. 1908. 
Springfield Republican, p. 5, April 1, 1915. 

THE SHADOW LINE 

P Athenaeum, p. 253, May, 1917. 
Bookman, 45:536, July, 1917. 
Boston Transcript, p. 6, May 5, 1917. 
Dial, 62:442, May, 1917. (John Macy) 
Independent, 90:437, June 2, 1917. 
Literary Digest, 55:36, October 27, 1917. 
Nation, 104:760, June 28. 1917. (H. W. Boynton) 
Nation, 105:600, November 29, 1917. 
New Republic, 11:194, June 16, 1917. 
N. Y. Times, 22:157, April 22, 1917. 
North American, 205:949, June, 1917. 
Outlook, 116:116, May 16, 1917. 
Review of Reviews, 55:663, June. 1917. 
Saturday Review. 123:281, March 24, 1917. 
Spectator, 118:391, March 31, 1917. 
Springfield Republican, p. 19. May 27. 1917. 
The Times. London, Literary Supplement, p. 138, March 
22, 1917. 

TALES OF UNREST 

Academy, 56:66, January, 1899. 

Athenaeum, 1898, pt. 1:564, April 30, 1898. 

Nation, 67:54, July 21, 1898. 

Book Buyer, 16:350, May, 1918. 

Literary World, London, 57:534. 

N. Y. Tribune Supplement, 1898, April 3, p. 17. 

Spectator, 109:815-6, November 16, 1912. 

'TWIXT LAND AND SEA 

Athenaeum, 1912, 2:446, October 19. 

Bookman. 37:85. March, 1913. 

Boston Transcript, p. 22, January 29, 1913. 



114 JOSEPH CONRAD 

Independent, 74:538, March 6, 1913. 
Nation, 96:360, April 10, 1913. 
N. Y. Times, 18:51, February 2, 1913. 
Outlook, 103:596, March 16, 1913. 
Review of Reviews, 47:762, June, 1913. 
Saturday Review, 114:492, October 19, 1912. 
Spectator, 109:815, November 16, 1912. 
Springfield Republican, p. 5, February 20, 1913. 

TYPHOON 

Academy, 64:463, May 9, 1903. 

Athenaeum, 1903, pt. 1:558, May 2, 1903. 

Forum, 34:400, January, 1903. 

Harper's Weekly, 46:412, October 4, 1902. 

N. Y. Times Supplement, 1902, September 20, p. 626. 

N. Y. Tribune Supplement, 1902, September 14, p. 12. 

UNDER WESTERN EYES 

Athenaeum, 1911, 2:183, October 21. 

Bookman, 34:411, December, 1911. 

Current Literature, 52:236, February, 1912. 

N. Y. Times Supplement, 16:818, December 10, 1911. 

North American, 194:935, December, 1911. 

Saturday Review, 112:495, October 14, 1911. 

VICTORY 

Athenaeum, 1915, 2:208, September 25. 

Atlantic, 116:511, October, 1915. 

Bookman, 41:322, May, 1915. (Grace I. Colborn.) 

Boston Transcript, p. 24, March 24, 1915. 

Current Opinion, 58:351, May, 1915. 

Dial, 58:383, May 13, 1915. 

Fortnightly, o. s. 104:670, October, 1915 (n. s. 98:670 

(Richard Curie) 
Literary Digest, 50:885, April 17, 1915. 
Nation, 100:416, April 15, 1915. 
New Republic, 2: sup. 6, April 17, 1915. 
N. Y. Times, 20:109, March 28, 1915. 
Outlook, 110:44, May 5, 1915. 
Publishers' Weekly, 87:924, March 20, 1915. 
Review of Reviews, 51:761, June, 1915. 
Saturday Review, 120:298, September 25, 1915. 
Springfield Republican, p. 5. May 13, 1915. 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 

WITHIN THE TIDES 

Athenaeum, 1915, 1:211, March 6. 

Boston Transcript, p. 6, January 22 1916 

Dial, 60:216, March 2, 1916. 

Independent, 86:73, April 10, 1916 

Nation, 102:164, February 10, 1916. 

N. Y. Times, 21:17, January 16, 1916 

Publishers' Weekly, 89:642, February 19 1916 

Review of Reviews, 53:377, March 1916 

Saturday Review, 119:311, March 20 1915 

Spectator, 114:338, March 6, 1915. 

Springfield Republican, p. 15, February 20, 1916. 

YOUTH 

Academy, 63:606, December 6, 1902. 
Athenaeum, 1902, pt. 2:824, December 20 1902 
Nation, N. Y., 76:478, June 11, 1903. 
N. Y. Times Supplement, 1902, December 13, p 898 
N. Y. Times Supplement, 1903, April 4, p 224 
Speaker, n. s., 7:442. (John Masefield) 
Spectator, 89:827, 1902. (H. Clifford) 
Critic, September, 1903. 

As individual stories: 

N. Y. Times Supplement, 1899, June 17, p. 385. 

N. Y. Times Supplement, 1900, March 3, p. 138. 

N. Y. Times Supplement, 1898, September 18, p. 12. 



115 



[ 



ii6 JOSEPH CONRAD 

V. MISCELLANEOUS 
A. Brief Articles on the Personality of Conrad 

1904. "The Personality of Conrad." 

Academy, 66:198, February 20, 1904. 

1904. Photograph of Conrad's home "Pent Farm," and bri( 
comment. Bookman, 19:449, July, 1904. 

1904, Comment on his collaboration with Ford Made 
Hueffer. Bookman, 19:544, August, 1904. 

1913. How "Almayer's Folly" was written (With small pk 

tographs of his wife and son, and of his home.) 
Bookman, 38:352, December, 1913. 

1914. "A Sermon in One Man" by Mary Austin. 

Harper's Weekly, 58, pt. 2:20, May 16, 1914. 

1915. Picture of the "Otago," Conrad's first ship, and also 

map illustrating the world of his novels and tale 
Bookman, 41:129, April, 1915. 

1918. An Account of how Conrad was isolated in Poland 
the outbreak of the war. Bookman, 46:659, Febr 
ary, 1918. 

1920. "Conrad in Cracow" (Illustrated) 

Outlook, 124: 382-3, March 3, 1920. 

1920. "Joseph Conrad, Sexagenarian," by E. P. Bendz. 
English Studies, 51:391-406. 



B. Poems to Conrad 

1908. "Old Ships" by F. Maurice. 

Spectator, 101:734, November 7, 1908. 

1917. "Conrad in Snap-Shots of English Authors" by Richa 
Butler Glaezner. Bookman, 45:346, June, 1917. 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 117 

C. Portraits of Conrad 

898. Book Buyer, 16:389, June, 1898. 

898. Academy, 55:82, October 15, 1898. 

903. Review of Reviews, 27:630, May, 1903. 

908. Independent, 65:1066, November 5, 1908. 

911. English Review, 9:476, October, 1911. 
Pencil drawing by Will Rotlienstein. 

912. Current Literature, 52:470, April, 1912. 

913. Bookman, 37:557, May, 1912. 

914. Review of Reviews, 49:373, March 1914. 

914. Current Opinion, 56:374, May, 1914. 

915. Current Opinion, 58:351, May, 1915. 

915. Review of Reviews, 51:761, June, 1915. 

1917. Bookman, 45:637, August, 1917. 

(Photograph of the bust of Conrad by Jo Davidson.) 

L918. Bookman, 46:658, February, 1918. 

(Photograph taken in Poland, October, 1914.) 

1919. Current Opinion, 67:320-1, December, 1919. 

1920. Outlook, 124:382-3, March 3, 1920. 

1920. World's Work, 39:495, March, 1920. 

1921. Current Opinion, 70:819-21, June, 1921. 
1921. World's Work, 42:189, June, 1921. 



ii8 JOSEPH CONRAD 



VI. ROMANTICISM AND REALISM 

A. A Brief Summary of the Critical Definitions of 
Romanticism and Realism. 

A resume of the best known critical definitions of 
Romanticism and Realism will establish the fact that the 
distinctions between the two have been variously empha- 
sized as differences in subject matter, in method, in spirit 
and purpose of the author; but no one literary definition 
has yet been formulated to comprehend all three phases 
(See supra, page 5, ff.) 

In his History of English Romanticism in the Eigh- 
teenth Century, Henry Beers devotes the whole of the' 
long first chapter to a summary of all preceding defini- 
tions of Romanticism. He strikes off as his own roughi 
working definition : "Romanticism, then, means the repro- 
^T-'^ii?'' i" "'^^^^^ art of the life and thought of the 
Middle Ages." Georg Brandes says, "At first Romanti- 
cism was, in Its essence, merely a spirited defence of 
localization in literature," and Walter Raleigh draws the 
same general conclusion: "Romance, in its modern de- 
velopment, IS largely a question of background. A 
romantic love-affair might be defined as a love-affair in 
other than domestic surroundings." The briefest sum- 
mary of all historical definflitions of this term is mven 
by Neilsen in Essentials of Poetry: 

"Among the host of definitions that have been 
Ottered there are three that have been especially per- 
sistent. Heme, speaking of the Romantic school in 
Germany, finds the heart of the movement in the 
return to the Middle Ages. French critics have laid 
especial stress on the growth of the subjective ele- 
ment, and speak of the 'rediscovery of the soul' and 
the 'rebirth of the spiritual.' In England the favorite 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 119 

phrase has been 'the return to Nature,' with a special 
reference to the increased prominence m the poetry 
of the time, of direct description of external beauty. 

Mr. Neilsen's own definition he states in the following 
words : 

"There are three fundamental elements in poetry: 
imaeination, reason, and the sense of fact . . . Roman- 
Sm ts the tendency characterized by the Predomm- 
ance of reason over imagination and the sense of fact. 
Realism is the tendency characterized by the predom- 
inance of the sense of fact over imagmation and 

""^"Emotion, or intensity, does not belong, as a special 
possession, to one class or school, but is a general 
source of poetic reality in all.' 

"No single formula can hope to describe arid dis- 
tinguish two eras or define two tempers of mind, says 
Raleigh "If I had to choose a single characteristic ot 
Romance as the most noteworthy, I think I should choose 
Distance, and should call Romance the Magic of 

Distance." , ^ , ,, , 

We are all familiar with Pater's famous phrase that 
Romance implies ''the addition of strangeness to beauty, 
of curiosity to desire." 

It is Mr Woodberry who gives the essence ot this 
Romantic spirit when he says, ''Romantic art is touched 
with mystery, it has richness and intricacy of form not 
fully comprehended, it suggests more than it satisfies, it 
stirs an unconfined and wandering emotion, it invigorates 
an adventurous will." . . 

The most famous definition of Realism is given by 
Emile Zola, the greatest of the Naturalists, in his essays 
on The Experimental Novel. Zola uses the terms Real- 
ism and Naturalism as synonyms. He says: "To give 
your reader a scrap of human life, that is the whole 
purpose of the naturahstic novel." And again : 



120 JOSEPH CONRAD 

"And this is what constitutes the experimental 
novel: to possess a knowledge of the mechanism of 
the phenomena inherent in man, to show the machin- 
ery of his intellectual and sensory ftianifestations 
under the influence of heredity and environment, 
such as physiology shall give them to us, and then 
finally to exhibit man living in social conditions pro- 
duced by himself, which he modifies daily, and in the 
heart of which he himself experiences a continual 
manifestation." 

''Experimental science," Zola says in discussing the ex 
perimental novelist, "has no necessity to worry about the; 
'why' of things ; it simply explains the 'how'." 

William Dean Howells has put it in its simplest form : 
"ReaHsm is nothing more and nothing less than the truth- 
ful treatment of material." The qualifications and aims 
of the writer of the realistic novel M. Reynier gives as 
follows : 

"Ce que Ton croit pouvoir exiger d'un romancier 
realiste: le don de decouvrir dans la masse des de- 
tails les traits distinctifs et predominants; cette 
sincerite du veritable observateur qui se soumet abso- 
lument a son objet; cette curiosite universelle qui se 
porte sur la variete des hommes, cette large et lib6r- 
ale sympathie qui les considere tous comme digne 
d'attention et qui, si elle a des preferences, n'en a que 
pour ceux qui sont le plus pres de la nature; I'art 
enfin de degager un individu de la foule, en traduisant 
en faits visibles ce qu'il y a en lui d'original et 
d'unique, de le montrer dans son milieu normal, dans 
son temps et de peindre en lui un peu de ce milieu 
et de ce temps, de le faire ainsi tout a la fois tres 
particulier et pourtant representif: de telles qualites 
ne peuvent evidemment se trouver reunies que chez 
un fort petit nombre d'ecrivains privil^gies, a une 
epoque de culture deja avancee." 

Robert Louis Stevenson insists that the distinction 
between Romanticism and Realism is a distinction wholly 



HIS ROMANTIC-REALISM 121 

of method. "All representative art, which can be said 
to live," he says in A Note on Realism, 

"is both realistic and ideal; and the realism about 
which we quarrel is a matter purely of externals . . . 
This question of realism, let it be then clearly under- 
stood, regards not in the least the fundamental truth, 
but only the technical method, of a work of art." 

And again in a letter discussing this same essay he be- 
comes even more emphatic: 

"Realism I regard as a mere question of method. 
. . . Real art, whether ideal or realistic, addresses 
precisely the same feeling, and seeks the same 
qualities — significance or charm. And the same — the 
very same — inspiration is only methodically differen- 
tiated according as the artist is an arrant realist or 
an arrant idealist. Each, by his own method, seeks 
to save and perpetuate the same significance or 
charm;, the one by suppressing, the other by forcing 
detail ... I want you to help me to get people to 
understand that realism is a method, and only 
methodic in its consequences; when the realist is an 
artist, that is, and supposing the idealist with whom 
you compare him to be anything but a "farceur" and 
a dilettante. The two schools of working do, and 
should, lead to the choice of different subjects. But 
that is a consequence, not a cause." 

For other definitions and discussions of Romanticism 
and Realism consult the works listed in the bibliography 
in Appendix VI, B. 

B. On Romanticism and Realism 

Henry A. Beers: A History of English Romanticism in the 
Eighteenth Century (1899). 

Georg Brandes: Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Lit- 
erature, Vols. IV and V. (1906). 

Ferdinand Brunetiere: Le Roman Naturaliste (1893). 

E. Preston Durban: Stiulies in Balzac, IT. Critical Analysis 
of Realism, in "Modern Philology," November, 1918. 



122 JOSEPH CONRAD 

Guy de Maupassant: Preface to "Pierre et Jean" (1894) 

Clayton Hamilton: The Art of Fiction, Chapter II. (1918) 

William Dean Howells: Criticism and Fiction (1891). 

Henry James: The Art of Fiction (1888). 

Paul Lenoir: Histoire du Realisme et du Naturalisms (1889). 

Brander Matthews: The Historical Novel: Romance against 
Romanticism (1901). 

William A. Neilsen: Essentials of Poetry (1912). 

Bliss Perry: A Study of Prose Fiction, Chapters IX, and X. 
(1902) 

Walter Raleigh: Romance (1915). 

Gustave Reynier: Les Origines du Roman Realfste: Intro- 
duction (1912). 

Ernest Rhys: Romance (1913). 

Robert Louis Stevenson: A Gossip on Romance (1895). 
A Note on Realism (1883). 
Victor Hugo's Romances (1895). 
Letters, Vol. I. 

Daniel Greenleaf Thompson: The Philosophy of Fiction in 
Literature, Chapter VI. (1890). 

Arthur Waugh: The New Realism, "Fortnightly Review,' 
105:849, (May, 1916). 

George Woodberry: Heart of Man: A New Defense of Poetry 
(1899). 

C. H. Conrad Wright: A History of French Literature, Chap- 

te.-x,„. ,m=, 6 15 -»l« 

Emile Zola: Le Roman Experimental (1^893). 






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